The Nature of Darkness
by alena
Summary: Rumplestiltskin finds himself facing two tasks: to defeat his mother and to save Gideon. He has constructed a fail-proof plan to accomplish both, but subtle changes are set in motion when Belle refuses to act as he expected, and things turn out to be a lot harder than even he imagined. An alternative worldview, starting from the last episodes of Season 6.
1. Prologue

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 **Prologue**

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Even in the burning heart of summer, the stream was always deliciously cold.

The girl sat upon the bank, bare feet dangling in the water, face cupped in both hands, mind wandering far-away realms. Above her head, the trees arched their great boughs, their leaves a million flickering emeralds. Light and shadow danced together in swift joy.

This stream came from the great mountain beyond the hills, and the heart of the mountain—though you wouldn't always know it—was always pure and full of love. The finest, clearest water in all the lands. That was what the grannies and the village chieftains always said.

Her gaze lost upon the gleaming ripples, the girl thought of the mountain, wondering if its heart pulsed, if it felt happiness or sorrow. In the mountain lived wild and beautiful creatures, and beyond the mountain lay distant places, cities and seas and mysterious countries, just like all the stories told.

When she grew up, decided the child, she would leave her little village and see the world, cities and seas and mysterious countries. The beautiful beasts would await, the wild birds alight on her hand, and she would learn the happiness and sorrow of the mountain. Yes, that was what she would do.

But not now. Now it was time to go home.

With a soft sigh, the girl drew her feet back to solid ground. Rising slowly, she picked up a little basket by her side, filled with wild raspberries, and started on her way. The path descended through the forest, following the stream closely, and she lingered a little here and there. Overhead, bird called and trilled in duets and trios and choruses, and she whistled along with them. Her mother was waiting.

Halfway home, near Dreamer's Pool, she heard voices upon the breeze.

This was a place where the stream bent and swerved, carving out a small deep pool, and the forest opened to a patch of meadow. In weather like this, the children of the village often came here to swim, shouting with glee as they splashed one another, bobbing above and below the surface, snatching at the wildflowers that grew along the bank. Maybe I'd have time to join in for a while, she thought idly.

"This world is still innocent. It is still safe from the giants," someone said. A man's voice. It sounded young, but also not young, and there was a very faint echo to it, a bare murmur upon the horizon.

"Not for much longer, if the war continues." A woman spoke, an ethereal music in each word.

These were no village boys out for a dip. They sounded like no one she had ever heard before in her ten years of life. The child crept closer to the clearing, concealed by the tall grass at the water's edge, blinking in confusion and curiosity. War, giants. Those, too, were things she had heard of only in tales. Tangling vines and wild daisies brushed against her arms and legs, trying to pull her back, but she paid them no notice.

Through a gap among the leaves, she caught sight of a group of grown-ups standing in a circle, men and women, six or seven of them. They stood very straight and very tall, clad in simple robes of white. Yet those raiments—on second glance—looked like they were woven from thunderclouds and snow and air.

They were more beautiful than anyone she had seen or could imagine.

"This is the place. This is the purest water remaining in all the realms," said the first man. His face was turned toward the silvery pool, and the sunlight snagged on a glint of gold in his hand.

"Pure enough for sorrow," replied the woman. Something else filled the music of her words—weariness, though the child was too young to recognize it.

"Yes," agreed another voice, low and edged with steel. "We must do it here. We must turn the tide of the war."

"We must preserve the light—"

The sentence did not finish. The breeze drew in a deep breath, and did not exhale. The child was quite certain that she never moved at all, nor made even the faintest sound, but the nearest man in the circle turned his head. She did not see him walk or run toward her, but before she had the time to take a backward step, there he was, the sun fleeing to hide away from his face, an icy hand clasping her shoulder. His gaze pierced her mind in an instant.

"What did you hear, girl?"

She gulped. Her little basket dropped to the ground, and raspberries rolled in every direction upon the grass like countless garnets. In the middle of the clearing, the other men and women, too, turned.

"Do not frighten her, Hades," said one of them. "She's only a little child."

"We cannot afford to be spied upon, Zeus." The voice of the man beside her remained tight and cold. But the other merely shook his head, and then he, too, stood right there in front of her. An exchanged glance, and the clamp on her shoulder loosened.

"What is your name?" asked the newcomer softly. He was the one whom she had first heard speaking, realized the girl. He dropped to one knee, so that his gaze was level with hers. She could not describe his eyes: they were clear, as clear as the water that shimmered in the pool, but there were also a thousand veils between them and the rest of the world.

"Taya," she whispered after a moment. The man's gaze followed hers down to the upturned basket by her feet. He smiled. It did not look like he did anything, but all of a sudden, the basket had righted itself, and the scattered berries were already all home, peacefully snuggled together.

"Do you live in the village down there?"

The girl turned, looking away across the clearing and along the hill path. Afternoon light was still dancing across the valley, but in the distance, smoke was starting to rise from kitchen chimneys. She nodded.

The man understood. She did not need to explain anything to him.

"Don't worry, Taya," he whispered. "Rest a little while here. You'll wake up in time to go home before dusk, and when you do, you will not remember us."

Taya blinked, eyelids already heavy with the infinite weight of the other's quiet words. The man caught the child as her knees buckled. Gently, he laid her on the fragrant green grass on the pool's bank, then turned back to the others.

Those men and women, they no longer spoke, thought the little girl as darkness draped tenderly about her limbs. Not the way regular people spoke. They were chanting, maybe singing now, singing to the water. And the water sang back. Their voices were so near and so far away and so strange and so sad. Somewhere from an already endless distance, she discerned the word _love_ , and then, the very last word, _despair_.

To lower a child of ten to sweet slumber for an hour, then draw her out again with smooth silken cords: it was a simple piece of magic, almost a beginner's work. And the man who performed it—even in those days, many had begun to call him not merely a sorcerer, but a god. So understandably, he thought no more of the girl, and did not look back at the small still form beside the pool as he left this world. But something must have gone terribly wrong, for Taya did not wake up in time to go home before dusk. She did not wake up when the village men came with torches and shouted her name. They trampled all over the meadow, almost tripping over her, yet never saw her. She did not wake up when down in the valley, her mother let out a keening wail, as they brought back to her the little basket full of congealed blood, the only thing they had found. She did not wake up when summer turned to winter, when shadowy beasts began to stir in the depth of the mountain, when her village burned.

She slept for a long, long time, much longer than the god intended. And when she finally awoke, nothing in the world was the same, and she no longer remembered who or what she was.

.

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Note: This is my first foray into the Once Upon the Time fandom, so please, let me know if I get anything wrong.

I know the prologue looks totally unrelated to anything Rumbelle, but it will tie together...eventually. Rumple will appear in the next chapter.


	2. Plan

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 **Plan**

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The faint thread of blue glitter snaked its way down the length of the wand, end to tip, an intermittent string of distant stars weaving in and out of midnight clouds. Right now those clouds rested heavy and still, layers beneath layers after an age of disuse, yet ready at a touch of magic to burst into roiling life. Somewhere beyond the clouds, he could sense another presence at the edge of his consciousness, a not-quite-there glimmer of phosphorus in the forest. Fairy lights.

Slowly, Rumplestiltskin held out a hand, letting it hover a few inches above the wand. Shadowy magic rippled upward through the narrow gap of air. He had held this wand exactly once before in his life, but there was already something so familiar about it, biting and tender, angry and patient. _Motherly,_ the word rose unbidden in a small silent giggle. Was that what they called it?

Yes, motherly. Only his mother could have waited so long for him.

He lowered his hand an inch, still not touching the wand. There it was, the pull. When he closed his eyes, he could barely see it, the filament of blue spreading like swift lightning, wrapping around the black clouds and dragging them against the insides of his eyelids, until they surged and expanded to fill the sky. Under the sky lay a naked plain and dead hills, and an empty space howling in between. The solitary silhouette of a tower. A cold sulfurous wind cut into his face.

With a blink, Rumplestiltskin opened his eyes. Faded sunlight was still streaming in from the pawnshop windows, and the wand was still nestled peacefully in the velvet bed of its case. Lifting his hand quickly, he pushed the case's lid back down, a little more loudly than he wished, and exhaled.

Well, the Dark Realm it was, then.

This was the only reason the Blue Fairy had ever been willing to hand him the wand, of course. The corner of Rumplestiltskin's mouth twitched into a half-conscious smirk. After all, she had all but told him as much, when he'd gone and confronted her about this very wand. That was more than a year after he had used it to save Henry. After he had returned.

"I never had the chance to thank you," he had said to the head fairy, that time. He'd stopped by the convent over some meaningless mundane matters. Rent or some such.

"Oh?" asked Reul Ghorm, though it was obvious that she understood him instantly.

"For giving me the Black Fairy's wand. It was...ingenious."

There was a pause of a few seconds.

"I only twisted together the connections that were already in place," she said, meeting his gaze straight on.

Rumplestiltskin arched his eyebrows.

"Indeed. Although long apart from its owner, the wand still maintained it resonance with her. That is one of the 'connections' you mean, I assume?"

"That is its ancient fairy nature." Reul Ghorm sounded as if she was lecturing to a roomful of novices. "And the Black Fairy, too, has connected herself to the world of her exile over the centuries. She has molded herself in its image, and it in hers."

"And you added your own magic , and turned all these connections to a command." A part of him was piqued into genuine interest in their little academic discussion—the part that wasn't snarling in fury at the other's treacherous trick. "Admirable, the way you synthesized your little ribbon of light into centuries' worth of accumulated darkness. It would only take another bit of magic to complete the circuit."

"Another bit of darkness," corrected Reul Ghorm.

"Darkness, magic, whatever you care to call it." He waved a careless hand. "The effect is the same. The one wielding the wand would be sent away to the same place of exile as the Black Fairy. To the Dark Realm."

The other merely inclined her head primly.

"Did you think I couldn't tell?" he asked, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.

"I would never underestimate you this much."

"I was freeing Henry out of Pan's body." Rumplestiltskin remembered the pull he had felt even back then, a near-physical force that had started imperceptibly and built in a slow crescendo. "Any proper grandfather would have done the same. Not that you would know," he snarled.

"There is a delay in the effect of the wand. You had enough time to help your grandson." The Blue Fairy ignored his barb. "In any case, you were able to resist. It was a surprise to me, I must confess."

"I had other plans," he snapped. "I wasn't about to allow some wand—and you, if I may be blunt—to meddle in my affairs."

"I would not hand a magical artifact of such power to the Dark One without taking precautions," replied Reul Ghorm evenly, not even a trace of emotion in her voice. "That would have been...irresponsible."

It was far more than just a precaution, he could tell, though the Blue Fairy refused to say it in so many words. She had always expected that he would eventually succumb to the temptation, he knew. She had thought that sooner or later, his mother's darkness would call to his just a little too sweetly, and he would take the wand again, let his own power and his own evil flow. Through the wand, the Dark One would root itself to a realm it might, in a manner of speaking, call home. He would no longer be able to resist the pull, and Storybrooke's biggest problem would be solved.

She was right, needless to say.

Shaking his head, Rumplestiltskin returned to the present. All this would soon come. Right now, he must think about what he needed to do.

Take the whole thing as a puzzle, a mental exercise. Consider the current situation: the Black Fairy's curse had already enveloped Storybrooke, and Gideon's heart was in her possession. Consider the two tasks before him: first to destroy, then to rescue.

It had to be in this order, regrettably. He had contemplated doing it the other way, but the Black Fairy must have taken measures—because he would have in her place—so that she would know the instant he touched Gideon's heart. In any case, the mine tunnel where she hid the heart was heavily warded, and some of those wards would be impossible to disassemble or at least time-consuming in a way he could not afford, while she remained alive. Hence, his mother would have to die before he went for the heart.

He had actually considered simply sending Belle to the collect their son's heart, but that idea had to be abandoned after he learned enough about those damned wards. The Black Fairy was thorough, as only to be expected: her death would weaken the wards, but not remove them entirely. He must the one to perform the second task as well, go into the mine himself and hold GIdeon's heart in his own hand.

But the requirements for successfully carrying out the first task would make the second all but impossible. This was the crux of his dilemma. Too predictably, he had hesitated and delayed and let things come this far, racking his brain to come up with another way. He had wanted to avoid paying the price. But he could delay no longer.

Rising with his customary deliberation, Rumplestiltskin returned the case to the its old spot on the shelf, then returned to the table. Everything had become so much simpler once he'd worked it out.

These was no way around the darkness. It was the price.

There was a secret that Rumplestiltskin had never revealed, not even Belle. In all his centuries, he had never completely figured out the exact depths of the Dark One's powers. In those first intoxicating days, he had been too wrapped up in his freedom or what he'd mistaken for freedom to go beyond the moment. Later, he had become too afraid. He had let go of Baelfire's hand above a green whirlpool, and then he had finally figured it out: there was absolutely nothing else, no more part of himself he could afford to yield, not without a fight. Not if he wanted to see his son ever again.

So fear had led him to war, after all. He had found his focus and his wits. He had hidden behind ramparts of madness, ambushed under the cover of games and deals. He had built mazes and traps inside his own mind, never giving the power, and therefore the demon, enough open space to rampage. It had been long and it had been alone, and a part of him had always known that all of it was nothing but delaying tactics, but every inch of his retreat had been contested, until Belle…Belle had lulled him into false hopes and he had grown careless. The demon had regrouped and leaped back, with a roar against the cage's bars, except the game had changed and the cage was everywhere and there was no more space and no more time left, and then...And then Bae. And the war had almost ended.

The barest thought of those days constricted inside his chest, making his heart convulse, but Rumplestiltskin knew it was only emotions. He could not afford to indulge himself now. Now he must think about his mother.

His mother has all the power and none of the fears. It was not the weakness of love that brought her back to him, of that much he could be sure. She possessed her darkness and not the other way around, which gave her strength beyond what he could even dare to contemplate. She had already amply demonstrated that strength.

He never had the courage to fight on both fronts.

So, after all these years, time had come to lay down arms and surrender. Time had come to call upon the enemy, to lower the drawbridge and lift the gates. He would let it in, turn it against his other adversary, and then it would be darkness against darkness, open battle upon the plain, magic charging each other in clamor and tempest. For this time, for the last time, it would have to do.

There was some sort of irony meant here, he supposed, this death struggle between mother and son, but it was—after he had considered it logically—only fitting.

It looked like one part of that prophecy was true, then. As for the rest...

The memory, so recently brought back to the surface, intruded again. Rumplestiltskin shook his head, pushing down the soft glow of torches in the fairy vault and the sensation of arms around him. It took him another brief while to dispel the far-away echo, the gentle voice above him, crooning a lullaby. But no matter; this echo, too, would fade soon enough once he performed the next step. He was still puzzled by the way everybody, then and now, had so stubbornly refused to see the obvious. How could anyone have been so blind to believe him the Savior? That had only been one of fate's clever little feints, a red-herring to trick events onto their determined course. No savior, no light was going to kill the Black Fairy. Only darkness would be strong enough.

This wand was strong enough. And the Blue Fairy's little 'precaution', too, played into his hands. It would solve one of the problems associated with his surrender.

Which still left the other—the last—problem. For the hundredth time, Rumplestiltstkin visualized himself standing alone in the shadows, the mine tunnel's walls closing in around him, his mother dead, his son's heart in hand, just as according to the plan. His own heart he could not see, but there was no need.

"With the final battle won and the Savior dead, not even the laws of magic will apply..." he whispered to himself, repeating his mother's words. In his mind he could see her face again, her eyes flashing under the street lamp's cold dreary light , as the two of them stood alone in the silent midnight street. She had told him of her intentions, and of how much power Gideon's heart—the heart of one who killed the Savior—would gain in that victory.

He would be holding that heart in his palm.

The air went taut against him. Rumplestiltskin drew himself in further, forcing his inner eye to center upon the single point of future time. He could not feel it yet, not truly, but this already served as an excellent approximation. The faint noise of clashing metal, very distant, far beyond the cave—that would be swords, the final battle raging out there in the night. The weight of blackness, heavy and bright and burning inside and out—that would be himself.

What would he do with Gideon's heart?

He could already list the arguments. He would whisper but a few words, father to son. He would change the battle's outcome. He would free himself. He would piece his family together again. He would change the rules of magic, shatter them to a thousand glittering knife-shards, and cut down the gods and fate itself with them. Bring back the dead. Bring love back from the dead.

He would listen.

This was no seer's vision, not yet, Rumplestiltskin reminded himself calmly. This was only a calculation, based on knowledge and experience and basic deductions. And he had figured out the solution to this difficulty, too. He knew precisely what to do.

True, there was still a whisper inside him that kept telling him that there was still a chance, that he might still retain enough of whatever it was in him, that he might still make the right choice for once. The whisper came in Belle's voice.

"All these years," she said, holding his hands, hope already aflame once more in her eyes. "All these years I've known there was a good man behind the beast. And now you know it, too."

He had wanted so much to believe her. He still did, even now. He wanted to pick up the phone and call her, hear her voice and her hope, tell her how he would save their son and everyone else, tell her that they could begin anew. But the rational part of his mind, too, could still speak. He had responded to her fervor by allowing the Black Fairy to cast her curse. At this point, she would not recognize him even if he called.

And even if Belle still remembered him under this curse, he would simply end up telling her how afraid he was. He could make himself surrender to the darkness, to kill his mother, but the dagger—the merest thought of the dagger in Belle's hand and the command in Belle's voice made him want to curl in on himself. He could estimate how much of himself would remain after the first task, but after the second? He had no idea.

And it would never do for Belle to know this.

She was wrong, Rumplestiltskin repeated to himself. She was falling once more into the old habit of deluding herself, and it was up to him to finally stop the cycle.

He would carry out the plan exactly as constructed. He could make it work, despite the obstacles.

It was time to continue.

Raising his left hand to eye-level, Rumplestiltskin stared at the wedding ring on his finger for a few seconds, then grabbed onto the bauble-for bauble it was, no matter what he tried to tell himself. It took him two wrenches to pull it off. He placed it on the table.

Once more, he checked his ingredients. There must be no mistake, no missing piece.

The book, Belle's book, already enchanted. He had been truly surprised when he'd pulled it from the cabinet beneath the pawnshop counter, its green and gold cover faded and the pages well-thumbed, but intact. It was not like his mother to make a mistake like this. But he was never one to pass up an opening, no matter how small.

The letter, already written and sealed. It had taken him four drafts but he had at last made everything clear, deleted all lies, and left no room for misinterpretations.

Wand. Dagger. All in place.

Darkness. Oh, the darkness, of course, was always more than ready. The darkness was rearing and snarling and slamming against the gates.

So that left just one last thing. The solution to the last problem.

Laying a hand against his chest, Rumplestiltskin found his own heartbeat. He was mildly satisfied to notice that it was steady. A part of him growled at the idea of taking a page out of Cora's book, but necessity made a good teacher, and he was nothing if not an eager student. The obstacles he had anticipated were right here, at this step, but those obstacles were also nothing more than illusions of his own mind.

Carefully, he reached past those illusions and brought up another recent memory, one that had been pre-selected for maximal efficacy. This memory gave no mirages and no false hopes. There. She was standing on the dock, facing the beast, the pirate's ship, swaying softly on the sunlit waves at her back, the wind touching her hair. The glower of her eyes went square and straight against his, nothing but icy anger in them.

"Threats will not make me love you again," she spat out bitterly.

He heard his own words in response, as he stood there before her. They were cold, too, as cold as hers had been, and desperate nonsense on top of that. Necessity never made anyone love. At that time, his entire mind had been consumed in the effort of not listening to her, not facing the final and inevitable truth. Everything between them, from their first meeting, first touch, first kiss, it was all meant to lead to that moment; it must, as surely as life must lead to death. He had been a fool to ever imagine it could be otherwise.

He had been a fool to forget what he was. But not anymore.

He could make her do as he intended—the final trace of doubt fled as he met her stare. Everything made sense. Everything fitted perfectly.

"Oh, you're absolutely right," muttered Rumplestiltskin. A grin flitted onto the the edges of his mouth. "It will not make you love me again."

Keeping his sight focused on the hollow icy glaze of Belle's eyes, he reached in, curled his fingers around his heart, and pulled.

.

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Notes: This chapter takes place after the Black Fairy cast her curse, but before Rumplestiltskin goes to look for Belle in Episode 6x22. He will still try to do the same things as in that episode, but they'll be a bit more difficult.

The Black Fairy's wand was kept by the Blue Fairy after her banishment. Eventually, in Episode 3x11, the Blue Fairy gave it over (through Neal) to Rumplestiltskin, who used it to restore Henry and Pan to their own bodies.

On the show, the Black Fairy's line about how she could change the rules of magic by winning the final battle was in Episode 6x22, when she ran into her son in the pawnshop. For this fic, I have moved it up to the time when she and Rumplestiltskin met in the street at night (the last scene of Episode 6x19).

With great thanks to Ethereal-Wishes for beta-reading and for many helpful comments.


	3. Letter

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 **Letter**

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It was always the same memory, the one where she was standing on the dark road, facing the monster, the battle line drawn between them in red spray paint on asphalt, the dagger gripped so tightly that it grew into her hand. The night was empty except for the two of them.

"I don't want to leave," begged the demon, helpless, on his knees before her. "I don't want to leave you. Please."

His hair curtained his face, hiding his eyes, so that she could not see the tears in them. But she could hear them when he spoke.

"I lost my way trying to help you," she said. Her own words echoed inside her head and would not cease.

"Belle," Rumplestiltskin called out. He was just across the line from her and already fading to the horizon. His voice cracked. "I can explain if you give me a chance—"

But this was no memory, thought Belle, because in her memory there was supposed to be a crack in her voice, too. There was supposed to be the choking in her throat and the deadly clamp inside her chest. There was supposed to be the burning black fire of the dagger's hilt against her palm and the burning white fire of tears in her eyes. This time, they weren't there.

"This...this dagger," he forced out. "I can survive another tormenting me, enslaving me with the dagger, but not...but not you, Belle. Seeing it in your hand, knowing that you would...Belle. Please."

"No," she said. Her voice was steady and she was not pleading, not this time, not ever again. It was as if she'd finally awoken from a dream. She had finally exhausted her life's quota of tears and pleading, and she was free, and it felt right. It felt right to know that she was always meant for this, to be the hero that slayed the beast.

"My heart...it has gone almost entirely black." The demon's face twisted in pain. "And it will drive away the last speck of light, its command in your voice...And you...you are not like this."

Something must have changed without her noticing, for he no longer knelt, but was struggling to his feet in front of her, his breaths ragged. He was only a step away from the red line between them.

"I still remember who I am." She lifted the dagger a little higher. Rumplestiltskin's head snapped back as if struck, and he stumbled, almost doubling over, but somehow he remained upright, without falling.

"This is not who you are," he insisted, and limped one step forward. He was right on top of the town line now, only a foot away from her. It looked as if he was about to take another step.

"Leave me alone!"

The same instant as the shout tore out of her, Belle felt the dagger fly forward on its own, yanking her arm and her entire body forward with it. Belatedly, she tried to jerk back, tried to hold on, tried to pull with every drop of physical power she possessed, but the force was already in motion and it was so much stronger. There was not even a sound as the blade pierced skin, flesh, bones, heart. It buried itself in his chest.

"This…This is who you are," whispered her husband. His face grimaced, but not his eyes. Then he crumpled into her arms.

Belle heard herself scream. She crumpled with him.

In a fraction of a second, shadows rose and filled the world. These shadows had teeth and claws and battering wings. They drove into her and tore her to shreds. She screamed again, but there was no end to the night.

She was falling; She would never stop falling.

This was a nightmare, a dream. This was not real. This was a curse.

This was his doing.

He had betrayed her again, hadn't he? A curse that changed and deceived her, wreathed her in terror, sapped away her strength and her love. Wasn't this what he always did, what he always would do? How could she have forgotten what he was?

She wanted to shout his name, but she must not. To do so would bring him to her side. Belle bit down on her lips until she tasted blood.

Rumplestiltskin. She bit down on the name. She bit down on all her words.

Then, without warning, her vision cleared. Air flooded into her lungs.

She was sitting on a dirty linoleum floor, its red and beige squares somehow half-familiar, though she could not quite remember how. A kitchen, by the looks of it. Why a kitchen? Where had she been?

Day was fading into night, and someone had already switched on the light. The whiteness of the walls made her eyes ache. Shakily, Belle clambered to her feet. She glanced about wildly, seeking something, anything by which to orient herself—

On the old white-painted table at the center of the kitchen, there was a book.

Pale fluorescent light fluttered against the green cover and the gold-embossed artwork. She did not need to read the title to know what it was.

Blinking, Belle picked up her book.

The air shimmered around her. The effects of the curse must have not yet worn off and she must have been still confused, because it appeared that she was not in a strange kitchen after all. Instead, she was home, everything in the room just as they'd last left it, her husband's comforting presence still in the air—

Not home. Not anymore.

She was in the house she had once shared with her estranged husband, in his study, standing in front of the heavy mahogany desk instead of a rickety kitchen table, one hand gripping the edge, the book still clamped tightly against her chest. Here, too, the lights have already been switched on. Everything was silent.

The desk had been cleared of Rumple's usual mess of books and papers, and only three objects sat on the polished surface. A plain white envelope, unaddressed. A wooden box, which for a second reminded her of the one in which she had once been trapped while under the sleeping curse, though this one was a bit bigger and unadorned. Then, incongruously, an electric kitchen timer in gray plastic, its digital display stationary at 4:00.

Laying her book down on the desk, Belle lifted the envelope. It was sealed.

The sound of her own heartbeat had begun to hammer inside her ears again, but she forced herself to remain standing where she was, and steeled herself against the abrupt onslaught of premonitions. The house had gone cold.

Drawing in a deep breath, she tore the envelope open.

There was not even her name to start the letter.

 _The Black Fairy is dead if you are reading this. To save your son, follow these instructions exactly._

 _There is a timer on the desk, set for four minutes. Start the timer. Do this right now, before reading the rest of the letter._

Belle glanced up from the page and over at the timer. With an automatic hand that surprisingly only shook a little, she reached across and pressed the start button. On the display, 4:00 flickered to 3:59.

 _In the box on the desk, you will find a heart, which will be nearly completely black, though there should still be one undarkened spot on it. Find that spot. Also, the wards for the dagger have been opened to you and you only; it is in the same location as you know. While the timer runs, open the wards and find the dagger._

 _When the timer's alarm sounds, pick up the dagger, hold it to the undarkened spot on the heart, and say the following words: I command you to save Gideon's heart. It is absolutely necessary that you speak this command, and nothing else. Everything depends on this. Repeat this command and continue to repeat it._

 _I need not remind you of the extreme danger, or more precisely, the certainty of disaster, that will arise from speaking to me in any other way, and of giving me false hopes._

 _The undarkened spot on the heart will shrink slowly while you repeat the command, but after some time, it will stop shrinking, or disappear entirely. When either of these two things happen, place your hand on the cover of your book again. It will transport you to the abandoned mine outside town, where you will retrieve Gideon's heart. It will be safe for you to enter._

 _Things will be very difficult for him, especially at first, but his heart is unstained._

 _In the unlikely event that you see me again, use the dagger to banish me once more to the place from which I have escaped. Again, in such a scenario, it will be imperative that you formulate this as a command, and in precise words. You, Gideon, Storybrooke will not be safe unless you do so. Very possibly, nothing will be safe._

 _Legal documents for the house and other properties are in the safe at the pawnshop._

 _R._

The sentences came in his voice as she read, cool and clipped and utterly devoid of emotion, not even anger. Even in the worst of times, she had never heard him speak to her in a voice like this.

Do it now, it said, before understanding sank in and tears flooded out. Everything depended on this. Gideon depended on this. To save her son she must act now—

Dropping the letter back onto the desk, Belle laid her hand on the lid of the box, and lifted it open.

The heart inside was not as the letter described.

Splotches and coils of inky blackness wrapped tightly around it on every side; they looked like a hideous tangle of chains. But beneath the chains, there was more than a single unblackened spot. Imprisoned within the twisted knot, a fiery human heart was still pulsing, still fighting hopelessly to break free with each beat. Its glow leaked out and tinged the box's walls red.

Her hand must have started to shake much more badly now, because as she reached in to pick up the heart, the box tipped over with a clatter. Something else inside—something small and bright—rolled out with a soft metallic click, and dropped off the edge of the table.

Later, Belle would realize that a part of her mind must have known what it was instantly, before the rest of her had a chance to think. At that moment, she merely knew that her knees were broken and she was down on the floor, one hand clutching Rumple's heart, the other scrabbling instinctively and frantically across the heavy Persian rug after the wedding ring. Her fingertips brushed against one of the intricate floral pattern woven into it, a curled rosebud under the desk.

At her touch, the rose bloomed.

A butterfly of burnished gold settled onto the rose's center, then spread its wings outward. The patch of carpet dissolved, along with the panel of wooden floor underneath. As layers of wards peeled away, one after another, a compartment slid open; inside the compartment, the dagger grinned up against the sudden light. The engraved name whispered to her in a soft hiss.

Follow these instructions exactly, repeated Rumplestiltskin icily inside her head, driving her back inexorably to the task. The four minutes he had given her were ticking away. She must not think about the wedding ring now. Not about how he'd pulled it off his finger and left.

The dagger shimmered. Of its own accord, her hand reached down, drawn toward the compartment as if by some invisible and irresistible line. Only this would save Gideon. She must use the dagger, command Rumplestiltskin to do what he no longer could or would. She had done it before and she knew how. But then, an instant before her fingers made contact with the hilt, Belle yanked back as if she'd just been about to reach into fire.

The voice—his voice—was tight and angry inside her mind now. Take the dagger. Do what was needed, do what was planned. It was ordering her to keep at bay all her emotions, before they caught up with her and prevented her from decisive action. She must do this now.

But it was already too late.

In a flash, the realization spread inside her mind from pinprick to conflagration.

Rumple had planned it down to the last detail. He had anticipated a battle with his mother, computed her powers and his own, foreseen the need to surrender himself to darkness. His heart would blacken, to a point where he could no longer trust its strength to save Gideon. So he had torn it out, along with...everything.

He had even torn out all tenderness and sentiment from the letter. Its very coldness—the fact that he'd even refused to write her name—was also a calculated gambit. He must have thought that if he appealed or pleaded, showed the least hint of hope, then the memories of her love would resurface and she, too, would hope. She, too, would appeal and plead instead of speaking an inescapable command. But he would no longer allow that. He had decided that the dagger was the only way to be sure. He had considered every step and left nothing to chance.

Except he was wrong.

He was wrong about his own heart. He was wrong about her.

She was supposed to save her son _and_ her husband, yet she had almost allowed him to trick her into halfway failure.

He was a fool. He was the Dark One. He was chained inside the heart of darkness itself and it had blinded him. He was…

Throwing himself into the beast's maws for their son.

The alarm went off, a shrill mechanical beep that sliced into her brain like a knife. Belle started, but then she found the strength in her legs. Without looking back down at the dagger in its compartment, she rose to her feet, turned and silenced the timer with a firm hand, and took a few steps away. She cupped the heart in both hands.

"Rumplestiltskin," she said. The sound of her voice was clear and it was not trembling. "I am not going to use the dagger on your heart."

The red glow pulsed against her palms, still steady. The chains of darkness cast a lattice of shadows on her skin.

"I am not going to use the dagger to command you to save Gideon," she continued. "Because I don't need to. You are not going to let go of him. Because he is your son, and you love him. You are not going to let go of the man you are. You have not let go, I know this. I am absolutely certain of this."

She had no idea if he would hear a single word. Was it possible at all to reach his heart—the Dark One's heart—so simply like this, without the dagger for protection?

"I know all this," she went on, "because I, too, am not going to let go. I am not going to let go of you. I know because I am holding your heart. Save Gideon, because I know you can, and you want to. Save everyone, be what you were meant to be. Be what you were born to be. Because I am looking at your heart, and—"

She paused to find her breath. There was finally a tremor in her voice, but she could not stop now.

"And it is not as dark as you think."

The words fell away. Abruptly, it struck Belle just how alone she was in the house. The moment passed, and memories rushed back, visions and sounds and nightmares. Fear rose and froze her to the ground. But then the heart in her hands shuddered, the motion palpable far beyond its previous constant rhythm, a wounded animal beating against the bars of its cage, frantic for escape.

The darkness, thought Belle, almost squeezing her eyes shut so that she would not have to watch as it finally swallowed the flame in her hands. But somehow she kept them open, and darkness was not what she saw.

For one single instant that could have been, must have been an illusion, the tangled black mesh upon Rumplestiltskin's heart flared into desperate white light.

A low choked cry ripped itself from Belle's throat. The fingers of her right hand still wrapped around the heart, she spun around, searching her field of vision. After an eternal half second, she finally caught sight of the familiar green shape of her book on the desk. Her free hand slammed down against it like that of a drowning woman against a lifeline.

.

* * *

Some parts of the dialogue in cursed Belle's nightmare are taken from the scene where Rumplestiltskin finds Belle in that house (from Episode 6x22), but in rearranged forms.

(One of the reasons) why Rumplestiltskin's heart did not blacken as much as he anticipated in fighting his mother will be revealed in the next chapter.

With great thanks to Ethereal_Wishes for beta-reading.


	4. Battle

.

 **Battle**

.

.

After all these years, her wand was still faithful.

Carefully, almost warily, the Black Fairy reached into the velvet-lined case. She savored the moment, allowing her fingers to run slowly along the wand's perfectly carved length before they curled around the inlaid handle. Magic coursed from ebony to flesh, all but leaping into her hand with an electric shiver. She had not felt this power in centuries.

"Madam Mayor?" Gideon stared across the counter at her in confusion, his brown eyes disconcertingly free of their usual mixture of fear and defiance.

"Yes, yes, thank you," she replied. It took her just a little effort to keep sounding unconcerned. "This is indeed what I'm looking for."

This is what she came here for. Pulling the folded sheet of notebook paper from her pocket, she flattened it against the pawnshop counter. One gentle tap of the wand—she hadn't lost her touch, not at all—and the strange runes scribbled across the sheet shimmered, then came alive.

Ignoring the young man's gasp of astonishment, the Black Fairy bent her sight downward, and concentrated on the lines of plain English that now covered the page in a smooth elegant hand. Half-consciously, her fingers tightened around the wand.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Memories floated up as they always did, memories of the world that had been her prison for over three centuries, of the wind that ripped at her bones and the night that would not end. A world from which she had so recently escaped, to which she would never return. But she pushed these images aside, and there behind them was the warm glow of fairy lights.

 _When light is stained by darkness, all magic is breached._ These words were etched into her mind, instead of written on this piece of notebook paper. After her exile, it had taken her a hundred and thirty years to find her way back unseen into the stronghold of the fairies, all the way to Reul Ghorm's private chambers. There, she had discovered the single mysterious line scribbled in the margins of that prophecy book—that hideous book of her nightmares. There, destiny had stirred for the first time, somewhere deep inside, so deep that she could not even recognize it consciously at the time. It had been a long while before she began to realize the significance of that cryptic sentence, to sense the signs that all pointed in the same direction.

To her.

One weak spot, within the very nature of magic itself. One dangerous opportunity so close to her grasp. And now, confirmation.

The lines on the page did not repeat the sentence she remembered, not precisely, yet they, too, spoke of magic's weak point. Moreover, they spoke of the exact mechanism by which she could grasp the fleeting chance. They spoke of light.

She was fated for this. She was fated to change everything. And the final battle was only the beginning.

"Madam Mayor?"

The young man's voice filtered through as if from a distance. She looked up, directly into his face.

"Gideon," she said to him, pronouncing each syllable with deliberation. "It is time."

He shuddered, backing away a step as twenty-eight years' worth of life awoke and set fire to his consciousness, but to his credit—she had toughened him well enough for this—only one step. A few seconds passed, then Gideon squared his shoulders. His old habit of futile resistance was reasserting itself, she could tell, chasing away the horror in his eyes and replacing it with a look of obstinacy. The Black Fairy sighed inwardly, and reached with her mind to the heart she had left in the abandoned mine tunnel outside town, visualizing it clasped in her hand. A small turn, and she saw the anger in Gideon's rigid form fade into a helpless plea. This, too, was nothing new.

"It is time for your task," she said.

Another mental push, and the lad moved. Her gaze did not follow him as he walked around the counter and across the floor, exiting the shop without further struggle. Already, her attention was returning to the sheet of paper that lay outspread before her, going over it once more, then again. Destiny roared inside her blood, but she forced herself to focus. Seven or eight sentences filled the page, top to bottom, but it was the first three that sang the loudest.

 _Light was born and darkness followed.  
_ _Darkness was broken and light returned.  
_ _When light falls, darkness rises..._

She must have remained lost in thought for some minutes, before a low tinkle of bells reminded her of where she was. Suddenly, the overhead lights came on. She had not noticed how much the dusk had deepened.

Without hurry, the Black Fairy folded the sheet and tucked it into the pocket of her coat. The wand followed; it was reassuring to feel its cool strength nestled against the side of her body.

"Mr. Gold." She pushed a grin onto her lips before turning to face the pawnshop proprietor, who stood in the doorway, motionless. "I was just here to pick up my watch."

Rumplestiltskin said nothing, merely closing the door behind him. She watched as he crossed the room toward the counter, his footfalls measured. With a polite nod, she began to make her way to the front door, the corner of her mouth still upturned into a careless smile. Her son seemed not to notice. He did not even look at her.

As the two of them passed each other—only a foot or so of space in between—something long forgotten and nearly unrecognizable inside her gave a tug.

Fiona almost halted and called out his name, his real name, but stopped herself in time. This was no place for such idiotic sentimentalities. Beyond the glass panes of the pawnshop door, twilight was fading into night, and Gideon was out there searching for the Savior. She must return to the mines before the battle began, be there to hold Gideon's heart when the world turned upon a dime.

Soon, she promised in silence.

"No, you weren't." The weariness in those few words of reply made her hand freeze against the door handle. " _Mother_."

She spun around. Her son stood leaning against the counter, eyes watchful, face expressionless.

"Rumple," she breathed. But the surprise only lasted a heartbeat. "You're awake."

"I saw through your games." He shrugged as if it should be obvious. Of course. Her boy was always so clever. But then he added after a pause, very quietly, "I saw Belle."

For a fraction of a second, his gaze slipped downward to his unadorned left hand, then snapped back immediately to meet hers once more. Yet it was enough for her to notice.

"You left her." Hope pounced out of the shadows like a demon from her own world. "You saw her for what she is."

"Not at all." Rumple's voice was cold and hollow. "She saw me for what I am. As did I."

"What could she possibly see?" The incredulous question was in the air before she could plan for it. "She never truly saw you, or understood you. She never understood anything about you!"

"That's not true, Mother." He sounded like he was trying to explain something all too simple. "Maybe she did not understand before, but she does now."

"How can she, when she has never even tried? She kept blathering on about the _good_ man—" the bitter irony of that word scalded her mouth, "—behind the darkness, as if that is the only thing worth her attention. But the darkness is you, too, Rumple. You and I both know this. Anyone who loves you would not fear to know it, to reach into—"

"No!" her son cut her off. At last, she could discern the anger in his tone. "Belle is right. She's right about me! She belongs to the light, not the darkness, and she should never, must never know the—"

"If she ever loved you, she would have tried!"

Rumple took in an abrupt breath, and Fiona felt a touch of grim satisfaction in seeing all the answers die away in his throat.

"She loves a mental image, a construct." She went a step toward him, pressing her advantage. She had to show her poor deceived child the truth. "An image of what she wants behind what you are, and she will happily break you to get it—"

""You are the one who do not understand, Mother! You never _can_ understand someone like Belle—"

"But no, it's not even the image of whatever man she invented that she loves." Fiona held up a hand, stopping him. Frustration twisted her stomach into a knot. "The only image she has ever truly loved is one of herself, as a redeemer and a hero. Don't you get it? Even after all this time?"

He did not speak, and an endless silence stretched out between them.

"Is that why you imprisoned her?" asked Rumple at last.

"Only for your own good." She, too, had regained her composure. "The final battle is about to begin, and when it is won…"

"The final battle," he repeated. "And that is why you did to Gideon—all that you did. You kidnapped him from his mother and tormented him for twenty-eight years. You made certain there was nothing but brutality in his life. You tore away everything from him."

"I tried to prepare him. I had to; it is what he's born to do." She frowned, amazed at his foolish views. "When the Savior dies, there will come a moment with everything in flux, an opportunity for magic itself to change. I must have it, that moment."

"You told me you wanted to change the laws of magic," muttered her son.

"Yes." She nodded, seeing Rumple's eyes widening nearly imperceptibly. Was he finally starting to come around? "You will have Gideon again—she will not keep him away from you anymore. We can be a family again. You will see."

"Gideon," he growled, "he won't have his life back."

"Gideon, too, will see that it is worth it." Her own voice grew urgent. "No matter how things appear now, it will be worth it. He will understand. I promise."

As she spoke, she took a cautious step forward, then another. He made no attempt to move away.

"With my newfound powers, I can bring back the dead. What you lost need not remain lost."

"Baelfire." The name of the grandson she'd never even met. The wave of all the unsaid things in the single word almost overwhelmed her, but she heard the wonder in it as well. She was only a pace away from him now.

"And Belle." She hesitated, then made herself push on. "I can make her love you. For yourself, who you really are instead of illusions. It will be different. And despite what I've told you, I…I can accept her because it makes you happy."

Rumple was holding his breath, she could tell. Lift a hand and she would be able to touch him.

"Will it…Will it be real?" he asked, his voice that of a child.

She reached up, and her fingertips brushed the side of his face. He did not shrink back. The contact was tentative, barely there, but flames ran up her fingers, through the veins of her arm, and into her heart. The last time she had touched her son, he'd been six weeks old.

"Undoubtedly," she answered, drinking in his presence.

Rumple's gaze glistened, and she took one last step across the remaining emptiness between them. She pulled him into her arms. Her son was solid and warm, alive, real, and she could already sense the pulse of darkness within him, as strong and true as her own. Gradually, his arms came up and encircled her, tightening against her shoulders.

"Mother," he murmured into her hair. "I'm sorry. I"m so sorry."

"Don't say that, my darling boy, you have nothing to be sorry for. Everything is going to be all right..."

"I'm sorry," he insisted. "Because you see...magic always comes with a price."

The world plunged into ice. Rumple's embrace twisted into a rough shove, and all of a sudden her own wand was burning against the skin of her neck like a fiery brand. In a daze, Fiona saw her boy bare his teeth in a sneer. She heard him speak, but the words were disconnected and incomprehensible.

"…For what you did to Belle and Gideon…"

The wand shifted, and force lashed across her face. She stumbled back several steps before catching hold of something hard, maybe a display case, off on one side. Its wooden edge cut into her fingers, but she managed to steady herself.

"You cannot stop me, not anymore." Fury was rising inside her, driving away her weakness and clearing her head. "I am not the one who will kill the Savior."

A few feet away, her son held the wand in a white-knuckled grip. Realization dawned in his eyes, mingling with dread, but the wand aimed at her chest did not waver.

"Darkness can't snuff out light; that's not what it is made for," she continued through clenched teeth. "Only light can drown light."

"Gideon," said Rumple. "His magic. It's all light."

"You saw."

"From the first time I laid eyes on him." A faint twitch along the edge of his jaw. "It was...unexpected to me."

"He is the son of a savior." She straightened. Her own powers were also tensing and coiling, waiting for the attack, ready to strike back.

"That is beside the point." Her son scowled. "You took him for his light; you've always known it was what you needed."

"To kill Emma Swan. To change the rules of magic."

"Except her death itself wasn't the point, not quite." He matched her, snarl for snarl. "Am I correct?"

For several seconds, Fiona fell silent.

"You figured this part out, too," she said at last.

"There were other saviors who lived and fought and died," he returned. "It doesn't kill the light or the darkness—they are both far stronger than mere human beings. But you. You are insistent that Gideon be the one who does the deed. Because the only way to destroy light is to turn it dark. It is not Emma's light you intend to break. It's Gideon's."

His eyes were ablaze, but she could see no brightness in those fires. The Dark One's fires. There was something dancing behind them, something both him and not him.

"When light is stained by darkness, all magic is breached," she recited slowly. "I learned this a long time ago."

"You said there will come a moment with everything in flux, when it will be possible to break the rules of magic itself." Rumple let out a long breath. A change had come over the way he spoke, nearly undetectable but she detected it. The wand lowered an inch. "This is what you mean."

"When a great light magic becomes dark. Yes."

"That will happen—if either of them kills the other." She could see his mind whirring, moving swiftly toward the next conclusion. "Is this all you need? For one of them to die in the fight?"

"Emma Swan has always seen herself as a pure hero. She fears darkness in herself far more than she fears death." Fiona shook her head. She could still get through to him. She must. "She does not remember what she is, yet the fear remains, just under the surface. And she no longer has the strength to find another way. It will be Gideon who kills her, not the other way around. Of this I am certain, I assure you."

"You have his heart," muttered Rumple, drawing back his arm a little more.

"And I commanded him to carry out his task. I have ensured that he will." Her reply was still calm, though all she wanted to do was to scream and grab him by the shoulders. "Not even my death will prevent it."

Rumple did not answer right away, seemingly pensive, the wand in his hand drooping toward the floor. Desperately, Fiona glared across at him, willing him to come to terms, to stop fighting fate and reality, stop fighting what he was. Another infinite pause, and suddenly her son let out a derisive bark of laughter.

"You spent twenty-eight years trying to blacken his light, Mother, and you couldn't do it. What makes you think it will work now?"

The wand moved again, swishing back in a blink of the eye, and her throat filled with the taste of blood. Instinctively, her hand flew up as if on its own, and a blaze of silver and black flashed before her sight. The Dark One's power, sharpened and amplified by the wand, slammed into her magical shields like a hurricane.

"Rumple, no, listen—"

Suddenly, she caught a glimpse of blue sparks, woven into the shadows like a fine thread of silk. Far too belatedly, all the dots connected themselves.

"Rumple." She could hardly breathe. "Drop that wand."

"You're afraid." A wild grin lit his face. "You're finally afraid, aren't you?"

"No, Reul Ghorm has enchanted the wand! You'll be—"

"I know what Reul Ghorm did!"

With a soundless howl, the outermost of her shields flared into a pale storm, then shattered into nonexistence. It felt like there was a steel vise clamped around her chest now, but the initial sickening panic had passed, and she was finally recovering herself. Gritting her teeth, Fiona shifted her hand an inch, and pushed. Her son faltered, staggering a step, though he regained his balance almost immediately. Behind the counter at his back, something crashed down from the shelves.

"Listen to me! The runes Henry wrote!" She risked an instant of distraction. "When light falls, darkness rises—"

"No more! Your darkness will not take Gideon!"

She could no longer talk. A heavy rhythmic noise had started to rattle inside her head, and there was a scent of ashes in her nostrils. Inside the room, a wind had risen, whirling around them, whipping her hair. Rumple's right hand, the one clenching the wand, was beginning to tremble before her eyes. With a grimace, he brought up his other hand and grabbed onto his wrist, forcing it back to steadiness.

"No, Rumple, that's not what it means! The darkness rises to—"

And then, through the glinting cracks of her shield, through the rage and the tears, she saw it. In a blast of illumination as terrifying as the magic battering her defenses, the knowledge fell upon her with absolute clarity, and it almost stopped her heart.

Fate had deceived them both. She was never the one destined to change the nature of magic. It was Rumple. It was always meant to be him, her lost, broken, brilliant boy. He would be the one to grip magic's weak point in his hands, the one to break all the rules. He still did not understand, not yet, but soon he would. When he took hold of Gideon's heart in the underground tunnel—mere minutes from now—everything would come to him, and he would discover the meaning of all that she said. The darkness within him, flaring so beautifully and so fiercely at this very moment, would stretch irresistibly and inevitably for the light. She might die, her curse might break, but he would finish what she set out to do.

But this was all right. He would be all right. Everything would work out. They would be reunited after all.

At long last, a real smile climbed onto her face and into the light of her eyes, and he saw it. She knew he saw it, all the pride and love a mother could feel for her child.

"My darling boy," she whispered. "Bring me back."

With a gentle silvery flicker, her last shield dropped away.

.

* * *

Notes: I was trying to figure out what the Black Fairy was really trying to accomplish in the final battle, and for this fic, the idea is that she thought that by turning a powerful light magic dark, she will create a momentary instability in magic itself, which she will use to break the rules of magic. Whether she's actually correct about this is not clear. More will be said later about the line that gave her this idea: who wrote it, what it was really about.

The first translated line of the runes written by Henry, "Light was born and darkness followed", is the same as in Episode 6x22. I made the rest of the lines go off in a different direction. Rumplestiltskin will figure out very soon what "When light falls, darkness rises" means. (In the next chapter, just as his mother foresaw.)

With very great thanks to Ethereal_Wishes for beta-reading.


	5. Choice

.

 **Choice**

.

.

With a clatter, the Black Fairy's wand broke into three pieces against the floor.

Inside the pawnshop, it had begun to rain ashes, noiselessly, gently, brushing against his face and burning his eyes. One hand gripping the counter for balance, Rumplestiltskin drew in a slow breath, then again, then again. Something had twisted into a dozen knots inside his chest. Not his heart. Its phantom.

The first battle was over. Won.

The ghost of his mother's embrace still pressed against his shoulders. Her words were still loud and clear in his ears. She had spoken of light and darkness in ways he never imagined possible, yet when all the questions and answers fell away, when magical power was the only thing left between them, she had made mistakes. Or at least he supposed she had, especially when it came down to her last shield. And in the end, the very end, she had looked at him through all that swirling, screeching magic, and he thought he'd seen—he could not be sure—maybe he had seen something in her eyes that was not a lie.

He could not afford to dwell on those things right now. All he could do at this point was to thank his own foresight in removing his heart.

A tug came, from somewhere either inside his head or very far away, barely perceptible as of yet. The lamps overhead flickered suddenly. No, it was not merely the lamps, but the room itself, in a fraction of a second swerving to another, much darker place, then back to normal once more. The temperature in the shop wobbled.

This was the pull, Reul Ghorm's little band of glitter twined about the wand. It was already at work, burying its slender hook inside him, establishing its first hold. In the next minutes, it would thicken to ropes and chains, binding him and dragging him irresistibly to exile, to the Dark Realm. This time, he would not be able to resist.

His time was limited and there was none to spare. Rumplestiltskin squared his shoulders, returning to focus. He still retained enough of himself to know his next task.

Next. Next was Gideon's heart.

He needed to move. The thought had barely solidified before the room dissolved into reddish smoke. A moment later, he was already standing in an empty field outside town, beneath a fresh pale moon, surrounded by mounds of boulders and bare earth, dilapidated rail tracks under his feet. A few yards ahead, the black opening to the mines gaped.

The chilly night cleared his head a little. There was something else he must do. His final conversation with the Black Fairy had introduced another variable, one that must be dealt with. Though he grimaced at the need for delay, Rumplestiltskin dug his cellphone out of his pocket.

Henry picked up on the first ring.

"Grandpa?" The boy sounded out of breath, as if he had been and was still running. "My mom—Emma—she remembers! Everything! The curse must be broken—"

"Yes," Rumplestiltskin cut him off. "Now listen to me carefully."

In two succinct sentences, he outlined the situation, the Black Fairy's death and her possession of Gideon's heart, leaving out his mother's precise goals and her complicated theories of magic. In the background, he could hear others, Storybrooke's little band of self-appointed heroes gathering to face down his son. For a second, he nearly transported back to place himself between them and Gideon, but managed to suppress the irrational urge. Over the phone, someone yelled in the distance, a woman, maybe Regina. Not that it mattered.

"But the Black Fairy's dead," panted Henry. "Doesn't that mean..."

"Not quite." Rumplestiltskin halted and debated briefly with himself, weighing the risks of truth and omission. _A death wish I'd be happy to fulfill,_ the memory of Emma Swan's voice reverberated angrily across the back of his mind.

"The Black Fairy said that she enchanted Gideon's heart," he plunged on. "She said he would carry out her command no matter what. Not even her death would stop it. She could have been bluffing—"

Inside his chest, at the location where his heart would have been, something ripped. It was the envelope of his letter in Belle's hands. The twinge made Rumplestiltskin clench his teeth. He glanced down at his watch. Four minutes.

"She could very well have been bluffing," he repeated emphatically. "Either way, I am going to get Gideon's heart right now, and if she enchanted it I will break those enchantments. When I do, he will stop. He will not kill the Savior."

Next to his ear, the phone had gone quiet, though his grandson was still there; he could hear the boy's thick breathing. A long moment passed.

"Henry? Do you hear me?"

"Gideon," whispered Henry at last, the single name clenched with fear. "He's here. Standing down the street. He's got the sword."

"Hold him off," snapped Rumplestiltskin, squinting into the mouth of the tunnel before him. "Delay him for a few more minutes. I am going to get his heart now."

"Wait! But you just said the Black Fairy—"

"Four—three and half minutes." He looked again at his watch. His senses were already searching the lingering wards inside the mine, the dusty tinge of their heat, the hint of their burnt scent. "Hold Gideon off for three and half more minutes, and I will stop him. I will free his heart, and he will stop. His light will not fall. Everything will be fine. Do you understand? "

Henry yelled something again, but not into the phone, and Rumplestiltskin did not make out the words.

"Grandpa! We can't—"

Tossing the phone aside onto the ground, Rumplestiltskin strode into the mine.

A blue glow illuminated the passage with a flick of his hand, and the tangled magic strung across the path flashed into life. The first ward was only a few yards ahead. Had his mother been alive, it would have been an invisible steel wall that would have taken an hour to shatter, but right now it was already deteriorating, a brittle net of dangling wires. He ripped them down and flung them aside.

Time was ticking away; he had already used up too much of it making the phone call. Rumplestiltskin swore inwardly for having allowed himself only four minutes to break all of his mother's wards and make his way to Gideon's heart. But it could not be helped now. In any case, he had done his calculations and four minutes were just about at the limit of what he dared to plan for. The wand's effect would amplify soon.

Another obstacle across the path, this one built of fog and madness. It felt like _her_ , her feverish touch and the wild intensity of her gaze, but Rumplestiltskin did not let it distract him. A gesture, and the barrier evaporated. He began to work methodically: scan the tunnel ahead, sense the next ward, dismantle, move forward. The ground under his feet was uneven, strewn with boulders and pieces of disused rail, but magic was able to guide his steps.

There was one breath-stopping instant when he advanced too fast and almost got smacked in the face by a disintegrating yet still murderous trap. He had to back up two paces and spend ten, fifteen precious seconds taking apart the poison-tipped blades. Somewhere along the way—he could not spare the attention to figure out where—a subtle vibration passed through the air, or rather not the air itself but his own perception of it, and the half-rotten wooden struts supporting the low arched roof shivered, switching themselves into different configurations. The Dark Realm, a part of him assessed dispassionately. A burst of concentration jolted reality back to itself. Gideon's heart was close now. He could almost sense it.

Abruptly, the narrow passage opened around him, and Rumplestiltskin found himself in a wide rocky chamber, the size of a large room. Shadows hung like heavy drapery against the walls, but in the middle of the cavern, a pale shimmer suffused the cold damp space, dispelling the gloom. A large stone stood at the very center of the floor, serving as a rough pedestal, and atop it sat a wooden box, just big enough to contain a human heart.

He glanced at his watch again. Three minutes and fifty-six seconds had passed since Belle opened the envelope. He had barely made it. Four or five more strides, and he was already standing next to the chest, raising the lid with a quick motion. A new glow—red, pure red, unmarred by even a single black speck—mingled with the silvery afterglow of his mother's magic. There was no trace of enchantment or trap: it was as if the Black Fairy had never laid a finger on his child. All he had to do was to pick it up and speak, tell Gideon to lower his sword. His son would be saved.

If the Black Fairy was right, nothing he could say now would make a difference whatsoever.

A few inches about Gideon's heart, Rumplestiltskin's hand froze.

Come on, Belle, he prayed in silence. Pick up the dagger. Everything depended on you now.

 _Rumplestiltskin,_ her reply came quietly. It did not sound like a command. Time slowed, stretching out, as if it, too, was holding its breath.

 _I am not going to use the dagger..._

A blast of ice shot through him, drowning out the rest of Belle's sentence. She must have said something else, but all he could hear was the panic ringing inside his ears. This was not how it was supposed to happen.

 _I do not need to..._

"Belle...please," whispered Rumplestiltskin. He had never imagined he would ever seek so frantically for the dagger's squeeze against his soul. She was not supposed to hope. She was not supposed to trust him. She had trusted him too many times, and he had betrayed her too many times, and even now the only thing he could think of was—

But it wouldn't be betrayal, not truly, would it? Not if all the rules changed. Not if magic itself changed. She would see, and understand, and love him once more. It would be real.

 _...Not going to let go..._

But he had already decided to let go. He had already submitted to the wand's shackles, steadily and inexorably tightening every passing moment. He had already decided that the Dark Realm was where he belonged, that it would be for the best, unless...unless he fought for another chance. He could still stay with his family, work things out with Belle. Gideon could still have a father.

 _...Your son..._

He had another son once. He had spent an age searching for Baelfire. He had fought so hard for another chance, never stopped, never rested, yet in the end he had failed utterly. Because all he had was darkness, and darkness was worthless—along with the likes of him—to those who made the rules. The only way this would ever change was if he made his own rules. The only way he would ever find Bae again.

 _You love him..._

Love. The yet-unfettered corner of his brain let out a growl. Love. His son. His sons. Love. Some part of him began to repeat it, fiercely, relentlessly, driving back the voices and the dreams. Love. Even without his own heart he could still recall what love was. Love. He loved Bae and he loved Gideon. Love.

Somehow, Rumplestiltskin discovered a little more strength in his hands, enough to lower themselves into the box and lift out his child's heart. He cupped it in both palms. Gideon's light fluttered against his skin like a fragile young bird.

He could feel it.

Light magic was no stranger to Rumplestiltskin. Through years of study, he'd learned how to discern its signs, calculate its force, yet he had never felt it, not like this. The Dark One's senses were simply not designed for such brightness. But now—now it was different, palpable, without masks, without walls.

 _I know you can..._

He could. He could not. He could not let Gideon fall. Because if light fell, then darkness would rise.

 _Save everyone..._

But he could not save everyone, could he? Darkness could not save. Darkness could only be what it was, unless light fell...

He could no longer hear Belle. She was no longer the one talking. It was his mother instead, shouting at him to drop the wand, to save himself, to learn the truth. And he saw her. Through the blast of magic and the swirling ashes, he saw his mother's eyes. There were no lies in them, only tears.

"When light falls, darkness rises..." Rumplestiltskin heard himself recite out aloud, the cryptic chant veering dangerously upward in pitch. A low laugh, then a taunt, then a song, then it exploded into a ferocious tune, drumming, unstoppable, everywhere at once. Light falls. Darkness rises. Falls. Rises. Falls. Rises. Light falls to darkness. So darkness rises, rises, rises to—

Light. Darkness rises to light.

The universe went motionless.

That was what his mother had meant. That was what she had tried to tell him. Even while dying, she had only wanted to tell him how to free himself.

 _What you were born to be..._

He had been born for the light. Then he had been damaged, torn from the destiny rightfully his. He had stretched out his hand for the light, again and again, and felt it slip away like water. Fate had tricked him, slapped him down a thousand times, but now the tables were turned at last. Through a desperate and endless road, he had come full circle. He was born to change the nature of magic. He was born to redeem this ancient darkness, to lift it into—

Light lay against his fingers. Its power would melt straight through his skin if he but allowed it. All he need to do was reach, when the moment arrived.

 _...As dark as you..._

Dark. The final drop of Rumplestiltskin's rational will clamped furiously onto the word. He would make Gideon as dark as himself.

He could drive away the darkness from Gideon, as the Apprentice had done to him once. He could break the chains.

Dark, dark, dark. Inch by inch, he forced the mantra into the foreground of his mind. He was the Dark One. Belle knew his deeds, deceptions, murders, betrayals, and he would be a fool to forget, to ache for things he neither deserved nor understood. Dark. Light could only be a mirage for the likes of him. Dark. He had always clung to darkness so selfishly. He could cling to it a little more.

"Gideon," said Rumplestiltskin. "Do not kill Emma Swan."

The Savior's name reverberated, and all the visions went dead. He was still the Dark One. He would remain the Dark One. A knot inside his chest shook loose, and now the words came, no longer halting though still a bit broken. It was the best he could do.

"Do not kill Emma Swan," he repeated. "Do not kill the Savior, Gideon. The Black Fairy is dead. She does not have your heart; I do. I am your father, and I love you. I am not going to let go of you. I am not going to let you fall. I am never going to let you fall. Remember this, Gideon. Remember who you are."

Nestled in his cupped hands, Gideon's beating heart accelerated. The change was gradual, at first barely discernible, but by the time he paused, its rhythm was that of a pounding storm.

"You are free, Gideon, no matter what she told you. No matter what she did. You are still innocent."

The ground swayed beneath his feet. The air had become frigid without his notice, and to the far side of the cave, shadows billowed. The realm of his mother's exile was clawing its way into existence around him. He was almost out of time.

He squinted down, searching. His son's heart felt like it was about to fly out of his hands, but it remained unstained.

"Let go of the sword, Gideon," he whispered.

The flame in his hands convulsed one more time; its sudden flare lit up the whole cavern. Transfixed, Rumplestiltskin watched as it began to fade, not into blackness, but into...nothing. It took an eternity, or maybe it only took a few seconds, but silence fell. The heart went stock still. Incomprehensibly still. Nothing was left except silence.

Gideon was gone.

He could not tell whether it was his son's pulse or his own that stopped. It would not start again. No matter how much power and will he poured into the cold unmoving stone between his palms, it just would not start again.

In his centuries of past existence, Rumplestiltskin had thought he'd learned everything about pain. He thought he knew grief; he thought he knew despair. He thought he knew what he was. He was wrong.

It seemed that he was falling through an infinite space, and would continue to fall forever. Yet even as the world spun away, a strange and long-overdue understanding overtook him. With excruciating and perfect clarity, he saw himself, his life in its hopeless entirety, saw each of his attempts to escape, each yearning, each love, each lonely inner battle, each glimmer of light. He saw each of them as the complete and absurd illusion it was and had always been. All he ever had was darkness; he would never touch anything else. Ever since his mother raised those Shears above him, it had all been set in stone. Ever since infancy, he had always been beyond repair.

He had always been condemned, and he had condemned all those whom he loved. To believe he could save them was merely one more delusion. To believe he had choices was another. Choose light, choose darkness, choose sacrifice, choose the right thing—it would all come to nothing in the end. Bae and Belle had both paid the price for what he was. Now it was Gideon's turn.

"Gideon...No, Gideon..."

What happened next was something Rumplestiltskin could never fully explain, even years later. It appeared to be an explosion, not exactly a physical one but something close, starting from the position where Gideon's unbeating heart rested. A searing white light flared to supernova. It enveloped him, ripped him apart to the atoms—

He did not see Gideon. He couldn't have, for at that instant his eyes were scorched and nearly blind. But he must have heard something, a cry of terror half-choked into a whimper, not loud, not even a scream, helpless. It was the cry of a small innocent child, his child, so Rumplestiltskin did the obvious thing. He reached into the light. It must have been with his own magic, yet it did not seem like magic, certainly not the kind he was far too accustomed to, but he shouldered his way into the ocean of whiteness, reached for his son, and pulled.

A bundle of fire slammed into his chest. Rumplestiltskin's arms closed around it unthinkingly, almost in a spasm. The impact knocked him off balance, and he stumbled several steps with a grunt, his back smashing painfully against a jagged pillar of rock. His knees slipped out beneath him.

The dizzying whiteness faded with agonizing slowness. The chamber expanded, contracted, both at the same time. There was a new dryness to the air, and something else that was neither shimmer nor shadow that fluttered along the walls. Rumplestiltskin's vision swam back into focus. Through the fiery afterimages scraping across his sight, he saw a tiny perfect face, eyes closed in sweet repose. Two delicate little hands curled in fists. A soft baby blanket.

"Rumple!"

His head snapped up. Belle stood framed in the doorway of the cavern, just in front of the passage leading back aboveground. Anxiety distorted her voice, yet she took in the scene before her decisively. Before his sluggish mind could react to her presence, she had already crossed to his side. Warm hands steadied his shaking shoulders.

"Is...Is this..." He did not dare to finish the question.

"Gideon," she replied. Luminous tears welled into her eyes. "You saved him."

He was kneeling on the rough ground, Gideon clutched in his arms, and she crouched before him, her face only inches away from his. Space roiled around them, and he could no longer tell where he was, except it was not Storybrooke anymore, but some other place, some other mine. Maybe a mine of dark fairy dust.

"Rumple?" asked Belle. It was already only an echo upon the horizon. "Rumple, what's wrong?"

He was momentarily unable to reply, so he just shook his head.

"Rumple! What is happening? Tell me what is happening to you!"

"It's fine, Belle," he managed. "You and Gideon will be fine."

"Your heart," Belle breathed, lowering one hand to fumble in her pocket. "I have your heart. It is not all black. You are—"

"No more time," muttered Rumplestiltskin. He was way past all explanations.

Belle blinked, and some realization seemed to filter through the confusion and rising terror on her face. With a swift movement, her arm slid around his neck, and she leaned across their newborn son. The next thing he knew was the burning pressure of her lips against his. She kissed him as if she meant it, as if the chains hauling him away from her were as simple and harmless as a curse, as if true love still existed between them. For a fleeting and shining moment, he was kissing her back, the contact between them a slender thread that outweighed an entire hell's worth of demons, pulling him back to life. He was so close to believing her, believing that he could stay, believing that he belonged here.

Memories of what he was and always be came crashing down, and Rumplestiltskin jerked his head back. He stared into Belle's wide and horrified eyes. An uncontrollable elation was beginning to surge, all but lifting him from the undulating earth. It was the Dark One—all the Dark Ones—inside him, declaring victory. The war was over.

He still had a little power left, however. It was barely enough to stabilize the vertigo, and shove the cavern back to its proper existence outside Storybrooke for a few more seconds. He pushed Gideon toward Belle. Her arms wrapped instinctively around the bundle.

"Belle," he said. A grin twitched over his face. "I did not fail you this time."

As soon as he let go, so did the world. The image of Belle and Gideon flickered before him, and as they vanished from view, he saw her mouth move, speaking or crying or screaming to him, but he could no longer hear anything. Above his head, the prison realm's bars locked into place, curtains of blackness dropped, and consciousness fled.

.

* * *

Notes: Belle's words to Rumplestiltskin as he stood holding Gideon's heart are in Chapter 3. In particular, the last sentence she said to him was actually "[Your heart] is not as dark as you think", but Rumplestiltskin only heard a fragment.

The line from Henry's runes, "When light falls, darkness rises", gives the way in which the momentary breach in the fabric of magic, created by a powerful light turning dark, can be exploited to break magic's laws. Namely, when another's light falls, Rumplestiltskin will get a chance to turn his own darkness to light. At least, this is how he interprets the line here.

With great thanks to Ethereal_Wishes for beta-reading!


	6. Return

.

 **Return**

.

.

Down in her arms, Gideon let out a wail. The noise brought her back to life, at least a little, and Belle tucked the blanket around her newborn son, soothing him with a quiet shush. It was chilly and damp in this underground chamber. She could not stay here.

After she managed to hold onto that thought, the ability to move returned to her limbs, and she rose to her feet. Her legs were numb but she was able to stand. There. There was the entrance, the doorway to the passage that had brought her here. She was able to keep it straight in her sight and aim for it. She didn't even stumble.

The cavern receded behind her. Now the tunnel. The space was narrow and the floor rocky, but a few scraps of magical illumination remained, enough for her keep focused on the three or four feet of ground before her feet. She could not afford to fall, so it was imperative that she made sure her concentration stayed completely and only on the next step, and the next, and the next. Nestled by her breast, Gideon whimpered softly, halfway between wakefulness and sleep. She had no mother's milk to give him.

Step by step, Belle returned to the world above ground. At first, even the tender moonlight was unbearable, but she kept her eyes open and steady on the path. She even kept them dry. This, too, was necessary and important, because if she allowed the night—this fresh, beautiful, open-hearted night—to sting so much as one drop of tear out of her, then all the dikes would shatter and the flood would hit, and she could not have that. Not before she got Gideon safely home.

Home. Another idea that wasn't supposed to contain such ambiguities. Belle considered the question while she crossed the rough field that separated the mine entrance and the road leading back to town, and her brain surprised her by how rationally it was able to function. Home would be the little apartment above the library. It would be cramped once she got all the baby things Gideon needed, but close quarters and clutter would probably be comforting to her at this point anyway. It would be less...empty.

Well, here was the road. No risk of getting lost now. As she walked, Belle stared at the nearest bend, a clump of trees that she could turn into a goalpost in her mind. She started to compose a list of the baby's immediate material needs, diapers, wipes, formula, bottles. Everything had happened so fast, so abruptly these past few weeks; there had hardly been a chance to properly prepare. It had been nothing like what she'd once imagined, the two of them together, picking out colors for the nursery, shopping for a crib and a fanciful mobile to hang above it, fabrics in pastel hues and printed with whimsical patterns, a roomful of toys.

She could not allow herself to wander down these paths. Follow the road. Diapers, wipes, formula, bottles. If she hurried, she could still make it into town before Tom Clark closed the pharmacy. Tonight, the basics and a bit of improvisation would have to do. Tomorrow she would think about everything else her baby boy would require, about creating a home for him. About the heart that weighed like a boulder inside her pocket. About her husband. The grimace on the corner of his lips, the manic glint of his eyes as he faded from her grasp like a mirage.

Think about that bend in the road, another hundred yards or so ahead. Nothing else. Get through these one hundred yards. She could not pause, could not let fear and visions distract her. She could not let anything distract her. It would never do to collapse right here in the middle of the deserted road.

A breeze fluttered her hair, and Belle increased her pace. The rhythmic motion settled Gideon back, but it would only last a short while, probably an hour or so. Lightly, she brushed a thumb along the small delicate face, then bent to exhale warm breath against his skin. Through the thick fabric of her coat, she could almost feel the beating of Rumplestiltskin's heart, or at least it seemed like she could. It was hard to tell for sure. She was too afraid to take it out and look.

Diapers, wipes, formula, bottles. Think about taking her son home. Nothing else. In the distance, lights flickered into view, the first houses at the edge of Storybrooke. Another hundred yard and no stopping. She must get Gideon indoors as quickly as possible. He would need feeding soon. Along the road, forest thinned to fields, and scattered building gradually connected themselves to continuous rows. The halo of street lamps reached out and enveloped her. Almost there. The clock tower above the library already loomed just around the corner.

Gideon was still fast asleep, his breathing tranquil, the skin of his face not yet too cold. The echo of footsteps and voices were floating to her now, speaking or calling or perhaps shouting somewhere nearby, half-familiar, half-strange. Belle ignored them as she strode resolutely down the sidewalk. She would be at the Dark Star Pharmacy in five more minutes. They would make it.

"Belle?"

She could not let anything distract her. Diapers, wipes, formula, bottles.

"Belle?" The footsteps were coming closer. Running. "Belle!"

She blinked, and all of a sudden young Henry Mills was two feet in front of her, storybook clasped against his chest, eyes brimming with questions. To prevent herself from crashing into him, she halted abruptly in her tracks, which was a mistake because two seconds later she was surrounded, and it became impossible to keep walking forward.

"What happened, Belle? I've been trying to call Grandpa for half an hour, but he's not answering his phone—"

Grandpa. It took a moment before she realized the boy meant Rumple. Another moment, and her entire body was as weak as water.

"What's going on, Belle?" A different voice. "Why are you holding..." A hesitation, as if the existence of her child was some sort of trick or illusion. "Where did that come from? Why are you holding a baby?"

A hand stretched toward her, and Belle's flagging strength snapped back, wire-taut.

"Don't touch him!"

She yanked back. Gideon stirred from the jolt, giving a soft whine, and her embrace tightened around him.

"Belle?" Snow White drew back her hand. "Take it easy, Belle. We're not going to—"

"This," someone else cut in. Belle looked up, and found the Savior's gaze searching her face intently. "This is...Gideon?"

"He's my son," she replied with an automatic nod, and made an effort to school her own tone back into some semblance of evenness. "I can't stay. Sorry. I'm in a bit of a hurry. I need to go to the store. To get some things for him. I need to take him home."

Surely she sounded perfectly reasonable. Practical. Rational. Yet as soon as she took another step, she found her path blocked once more.

"Wait a minute." Hook's glower drilled straight into and through her. "Your son? Your son just tried his damnedst to murder—"

"Killian, don't," said Emma. There was something Belle could not quite identify in the way she spoke.

"Your innocent baby boy ran Emma through with a sword, Belle. She..." He swallowed. "She died. If it weren't for Henry bringing her back, she would be gone for good."

"The Black Fairy had Gideon's heart." Belle stiffened her back. Wrapped in his bundle, Gideon whimpered again, this time refusing to quieten. Belatedly, she noticed just how outnumbered she was. There was no way she would be able to defend her son if they wanted to take him from her.

"Yeah, and you believed the Dark One when he told you he was going to get it back? Well, looks like he lied, because—"

"Stop, Killian!" Emma snapped. She frowned, then laid a hand on his arm. "It was my own choice."

"It didn't happen like that," Henry piped up. "Grandpa tried. He made the right choice. I know he did."

"But how does any of this make sense?" asked Snow. "Gideon's gone. Why would he be changed back to a baby?"

"Where's Rumple?"

Regina's question sliced through all the other voices. Even Gideon hushed temporarily.

"Gone." A dull monosyllabic answer that must have come from herself. Furiously, Belle clamped her mouth and mind shut. The thought of his heart sitting inside her pocket flitted across her consciousness, and only a rush of willpower kept the panic from knocking her off her feet.

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Excuse me," said Belle. Amazing, wasn't it, how well one could remain polite and cool in these circumstances. "I have a baby to care for. I really can't stay. Can we talk about this later?"

"It's all right, Belle." David was the one who now stepped forward. "It looks like you've had a shock, but nobody—" He back away a pace, and held up both his hands in a conciliatory gesture when she jerked backward again. "Nobody's going to bother you about... _him_ , not if you don't want to mention it, of course. You want to put all that behind you. We understand."

He must have mistaken her demeanor for indifference toward Rumple, Belle realized. Or worse. But it was just as well. She could not risk even a single word more about her husband, not if she wanted to avoid a breakdown now and here in the street.

"I need to take my son home," she repeated, not knowing what else to say. Next to her chest, Gideon's half-muffled fussing burst into full-on wails, and she had to bend her attention toward him once more.

"Did everyone's basic sense get shredded in the final battle, or what?" asked Regina, impatient. "Gideon or not, this baby's out here in the night, screaming while we enjoy this lovely little social occasion—"

She lifted a hand. Belle heard herself gasp as she twisted swiftly, hunching her shoulders in an attempt to shield her son whatever magic the other was about to throw his way. Faster than the blink of an eye, a figure dashed in front of her.

"Mom, no!" shouted Henry, already standing between Belle and his mother.

"Regina—" began Emma.

"Hey, I was just going to take Belle back to her apartment, okay?" It was Regina's turn to hold up her hands. She rolled her eyes. "Unless anyone can explain why we're all still hanging around here dithering?"

Slowly, Belle exhaled.

"Um, thanks, but it's not far." What a weirdly normal and mundane reply. "And I have to go get some things for Gideon first, anyway. I'll manage."

"And Gideon...Gideon will be okay?"

Belle was startled to hear the uncharacteristically hesitant question in Emma's voice. For the first time, she scrutinized the Savior's face, and noticed the palpable weight of exhaustion.

"Yeah, we'll be fine," she replied, attempting a smile. It didn't come out very well. Two or three more steps, and she found herself outside the encirclement of the town heroes. It was time to continue forward. But a short way down the sidewalk, Henry caught up with her.

"Um, Belle? Can I..." He exchanged glances with both his mothers. "Can I walk you home? My moms can go to the store for you. They can get whatever baby stuff Gideon needs and bring it to your apartment. It would save you time."

"Thanks, Henry, but I—"

"Grandpa called me earlier," insisted Henry. "Before he went into the mines. He would..."

The sentence trailed off, but it was not difficult to fill in the unsaid parts. He would have wanted us to help you both. Now that he's gone. Belle bit her lips while Rumplestiltskin's grandson gazed back at her. He looked like a young man now, no longer a little boy, and there was something new and different about him, a warmth in his eyes that made a lump rise into her throat.

She nodded.

The walk around the corner and to the library took only a few more minutes, a small mercy as Gideon had at last begun to bawl in earnest. At the front door, Belle halted.

"Here, let me," offered Henry.

After a brief inward struggle, Belle carefully handed her son over into the other's arms, freeing her hand to dig for the keys. Inside her pocket, the tips of her fingers brushed against an object that was both icy and scalding at once, and then her knees almost went wobbly again.

A heartbeat.

Rumple was alive. In the deep recess of fabric, His heart was beating, once, twice, three times. It was real, not a hallucination, not wishful thinking. She was certain of it.

"Okay, got it," she said quickly, pulling out the keys.

Upstairs, the familiarity of the apartment comforted her somewhat, but not enough. Not nearly enough. While Belle paced the confines of her living room, rocking Gideon back and forth, Henry was already in the tiny adjoined kitchen, hunting in the cupboards.

"I better start warming water for the baby formula," he replied to her questioning glance, perfectly assured. "They'll be here soon."

Belle had to think a bit before realizing that by 'they', he meant his mothers.

"He called you," she said.

Across the kitchen table, Henry switched off the faucet and turned. Unlike her, he obviously had no trouble understanding the pronoun.

"Grandpa called and told me about Gideon's heart." He nodded. "He said the Black Fairy did something to the heart. She made sure Gideon would—" a pause, "—would do what she wanted him to do no matter what, even if she died, but he was going to save him."

"I know," muttered Belle. "But Killian said that Gideon...It didn't work."

Henry did not answer immediately. A fifeen-year-old shouldn't be fighting to hold back emotions like these, thought Belle. But then the boy squared his shoulders.

"Grandpa tried," he stated, confident in a way she could never understand. "He made a choice. Here, let me show you."

Coming around, he reached for the storybook that he'd laid on the kitchen table when they entered, and flipped it open to the last page.

Belle stared down. Across the otherwise blank expanse, two sentences swam and shimmered. Every word was in English yet somehow she could not string them together. _Good and evil._ Well, 'good' must mean the Savior. She could figure that much out.

"Rumple's alive," she said. "I know he's alive."

Cautiously, Henry leaned across and touched her arm. He was already taller than she was, but still just a kid after all. The numbness that had carried her this far slipped apart, and with it, the barrier between her consciousness and reality. With a shock, it occurred to her that it had been only an hour or so since she had woken from the Black Fairy's curse.

"He knew." Rumple's letter flashed before her eyes, the crisp piece of paper, the unhurried handwriting. _The unlikely event that you see me again._ "Whatever was going to happen to him, he knew all along."

Both arms full of her baby, she could not take out Rumple's heart to show him. _Use the dagger to banish me once more._

"He wouldn't tell me, but he knew something would take him. Take him away." The way Rumple had written the letter, it had read like a damned ransom note. "He...He banished himself. From me and Gideon. But he wouldn't tell me—"

A knock brought her up short. As Henry went to open the door, Belle leaned against the kitchen table and drew in a few sharp breaths.

"Hey," said Emma, a bulging bouquet of plastic bags hanging from each hand. A few more sat on the hallway floor beside her feet. "Tom was just closing up for the night, but Regina and I got there in time."

"...Oh. Thank you," said Belle after a few seconds, forcing herself to rally one more time. The bags were hauled into the apartment and deposited on the table.

"The Dark Star only had newborn diapers in small packs, so we grabbed several. The only wipes we could find was the generic brand. And here's their last set of washcloths..."

Overwhelmed, Belle could only stare as Emma busied herself pulling out brightly colored packages from the grocery bags. Tom Clark's infant care aisle must have been cleaned out.

"They were out of ready formula, but Regina said the powdered kind should do. Blame her if Gideon throws up; she's the one who's supposed to know all about these things..."

This time, there was no hesitation, no tentativeness in the way Emma said the name. The two women's eyes met, yet surprisingly, it was the Savior who looked away an instant later. She rooted through yet another plastic bag, and a stack of pastel blue cotton emerged, neatly folded.

"There weren't any baby clothes at the pharmacy, but we, um, popped over and got a few of Neal's from when he was just born. Just to tide you over, you know, though I don't know if they'll fit really well..."

"Oh, I'm sure that..." Belle began, then couldn't quite finish. "I really don't know how to thank you," she said sincerely.

"Hey, it's all right. You and Gideon are going to be just fine, okay?"

There was a familiarity to the words, as if someone else had said them only a little while ago. Belle started, a sudden fire searing her eyelids—

"Do you think the water's warm enough now?" called Henry from the kitchen, shoving the echoes aside. Gratefully, she went around the table toward him, and immediate material concerns took over.

A few minutes later, Gideon was changed and sucking blissfully away at a freshly made bottle. In the new lull, Belle finally caught the faint waft of whispered voices from the library below, perhaps several of them, though she could not make out what they said.

"Emma, your family..." She had been so wrapped up in herself.

"Yeah, they're downstairs. Hovering. I thought you probably don't need a crowd in here." The other woman gave a slight shrug. "But I guess it's been a long night for them, too."

"I am sorry."

Emma's brows knitted.

"For what?"

"Gideon," said Belle. "Rumple tried to free Gideon, but the enchantment on his heart...I'm sorry that it didn't work out."

A long silence passed.

"It did work," said Emma very quietly.

"What Killian said..."

"It wasn't like that. Killian doesn't know." Emma stopped her with a shake of the head. Shadows flickered over her countenance, and Belle blinked in confusion.

"I don't understand it myself, not really," said the Savior at last. She seemed to have arrived at some decision. "Gideon caught up to us on the street, with a sword in his hand. I looked at him, and yeah, at that time all I could see was an enemy. Darkness. There was nothing except heavy, thick darkness out of that place where he'd lived twenty-eight years. And I saw...death."

Even with him safe in her arms, it hurt to hear her baby described like this. But Belle did not have to respond, because the other was already continuing.

"He swung at me. We fought, but then, that last half minute or so—across the swords flashing and banging, I suddenly saw him again. I saw his face, and it was different. I don't know if the magic lifted from him, or if an illusion was fading from my eyes, but there was no darkness in him."

"Grandpa must've been holding his heart that very instant," breathed Henry.

"Even though he was still coming at me with the sword, I saw it was not what he wanted. Nobody else could see it, but I could. I could see it so clearly. I saw that he was fighting it, that other force pulling his body, but it must have been too strong. I saw that he wanted to let go of the sword. He didn't want to fall. I saw that he was in pain. So much pain. I saw that he was innocent. I saw light."

She shrugged again, almost as if embarrassed.

"Whatever Gold did or said to his heart, something must have gotten through. And I couldn't go on. I couldn't darken myself like that."

Without speaking, Henry strode forward and wrapped his arms around his mother. Yet again, Belle found herself struggling for words.

"Thank you," she repeated one more time. "For telling me all this."

Emma disengaged from Henry's embrace and offered her a small grin.

"I wanted to tell you," she said. "I wanted to get it off my chest, I guess."

Cradled against Belle's breasts, Gideon had already dropped back to sleep. Moving closer, Emma gazed down at the peaceful infant for a long moment.

"Come on, Henry," she murmured. "It's time to go home."

After the door closed behind the two of them, after the noise of footsteps exited the library and receded down the empty street, after she laid Gideon softly in the middle of her own bed, Belle stood in the middle of her living room, and reached once more into her pocket. Her fingers curled around her husband's heart, and she counted to ten, to twenty. Finally, taking in a deliberate breath, she pulled it out of her pocket.

Just in time to see its rhythm speed up with a abruptness that was like a punch in the guts, going from steady to frantic before she even began to comprehend what was happening. As she watched, helpless, a new strand of darkness leaped like a whip against the heart's mottled background. In a flash, it wrapped itself around, another chain in the mesh that bound the crimson glow.

"Rumple, no! Your heart! No!"

The cry ripped from her throat as fear doubled her over. The black whip froze in mid-lash. It stopped. Unexpectedly, astonishingly, it stopped. It held still. A beat. Another. Another. The darkness did not snake further across her husband's heart.

"Rumple," whispered Belle. "Hold on. I'm coming to get you. Just hold on."

Only now did she realize that she had sat down on the floor. Against her rib cage, her own heart, synchronized with the one she clutched, was drumming a mad tattoo. The fire in her palms bled through the thorns and pooled onto her skin. With a crash, the walls inside her mind collapsed. Tears came in a rush, burning her eyes, her face, until she shuddered from the physical pain.

"Please, Rumple. Wherever you are, hold on. Because I will find you. I will come to you, and I will bring you home. I promise. Remember me. Remember Gideon. Remember that you saved him."

Space was imploding around her, crushing her with the weight of regrets, the ragged debris of love. All she could do was to crouch around the precious thing in her hands. He was too far away and she was too weak to protect him.

"Remember yourself, Rumple...I'm going to find you. I'm going to find you no matter what. I promise. I'm going to bring you home...Just please, please hold on, hold on to hope..."

.

* * *

Notes: I wanted to try to make some sense of the final battle in Episode 6x22. In her speech right before she dropped her sword, Emma said that she would not hurt "the innocent". Given the context, she must have meant Gideon. I feel that this is an important moment for Emma, and that this decision gave her some emotional investment in Gideon.

Rumple's letter of instructions to Belle is in Chapter 3. The lines from Henry's book, which he showed Belle in her apartment, is from the end of Episode 6x22: "When good and evil both did the right thing, faith was restored. The final battle was won."

As always, with great thanks to Ethereal_Wishes for beta-reading.


	7. Demons

.

 **Demons**

.

.

It was cold.

An eon passed before the he recognized the sensation. The countless tiny pricks upon his skin merged, coalescing into a viscous liquid that was not quite ice, not yet. It seeped down into his bones. Then came the roughness of the ground against his back. The air pressed against his face, and an aridness tore at his throat.

There was something else here, something familiar. So familiar that it felt like a part of himself. He could not name it.

Rumplestiltskin opened his eyes. For a long time, he saw nothing but swirling shadows. Eventually and with hellish slowness, the inexplicable shifting forms solidified, drawing lower, closer. They stopped just above his eyelids. A fluttering glow.

Magic.

Magic was the familiar thing, a faint layer of it just at the edge of his awareness. Everywhere and nowhere, a hint. Whispers.

He was staring at the rocky ceiling of an underground chamber, haphazardly crisscrossed with crooked wooden beams. It looked like an abandoned mine.

Panic was the first thing that hit, and Rumplestiltskin leaped to his feet and spun around, searching frantically for Gideon's heart. The chamber spun with him. Almost immediately, his knees struck the ground again. A grunt of pain escaped him.

Memories returned, first in gradual drops, then in rivulets. He remembered a pure bright fire, first in the palms of his hands, then in his arms. Belle's lips against his own, desperate and frightened, a last useless attempt to keep him with her, to keep him alive with a piece of magic that no longer worked between them. Himself, pulling away.

Himself, pushing their son into her arms. Relief flooded him at that final memory. Down on all fours in the empty cavern, Rumplestiltskin laughed, loudly and for a long while. The sound of his laughter bubbled up within, roiling, not joy and not despair, mingled with that familiar murmuring energy that filled the air around him and the hollowness inside him. He could not stop.

He had to stop.

He had to take hold of himself. Savagely, he grabbed onto this passing shred of rationality, jabbing and swinging it inside his brain to carve out a small niche. Gradually, the madness receded, and he steadied enough to focus his eyes. His hands were braced against the dusty mine floor. Their fingernails were black, claw-like, and fine glittery scales covered the skin.

The absence of his heart dulled the edge of fear a little, at least. Carefully, Rumplestiltskin clambered to his feet, and managed to take several steps forward, until he reached the nearest wall. He wobbled only a little. With both hands, he held onto a stony outcropping next to him, and took a brief while to regain his breath. He was still in the same clothes as he had worn in Storybrooke; for some reason this fact surprised him a little.

Although there was no visible source of light in the cavern, he could now distinguish the configuration of shadows and rocks. The chamber was only slightly larger than the one in the other world. A few yards away, crude wooden pillars framed a doorway that led to a narrow passage, its end lost in gloom. Across the cavern, he could barely make out two or three deeper patches of black, possibly openings to other tunnels. A vaguely acidic scent touched his nostrils, nearly imperceptible but real, undoubtedly real. Fairy dust. Except it wasn't. Not exactly. This was not the kind of fairy dust he knew and hated well; something was different about it. It felt wrong. It felt right. It felt like the scent was calling out to all the forces inside his mind. Dark fairy dust.

He must have been still terribly sluggish, however, because he neither heard nor saw any movement whatsoever. It was only his magical sense that screamed out, a fraction of a second before an object slammed into him from behind with the power of a Mack truck.

The Dark One reacted much faster than Rumplestiltskin himself could, swelling smoothly outward with a noiseless howl. At the very same instant, the assailant's impact flung him forward like a rag doll, straight into the hard ground. His ribs cracked against jagged stone, and a white fire exploded inside his head.

When his vision functioned again, the first thing he saw was a pair of shiny yellow eyes. Their pupils were two reptilian vertical slits, as empty and still as black crevices, but all around them, motion teemed. Against the bright background of the irises, thousands of minuscule specks of darkness appeared and disappeared with impossible speed, rising and falling from some unimaginable deep place like a multitude of living things. An idea of what lay down there came to Rumplestiltskin unbidden, and he shuddered.

The hidden monster stared fixedly at him, but did not attack, at least for the moment. Slowly, Rumplestiltskin raised himself from his knees, trying as well as he could to avoid abrupt movement. A dry rattle. Then something that could not be called a face emerged around the yellow eyes.

The creature's head was closest to that of a lizard, flattened on top, nose lengthened to a snout in front, yet both eyes faced forward, giving it an incongruous resemblance to some mammalian animal. Shimmering scales covered its skin, their hue somewhere between greenish gray and the dusty gold of ancient earth. Its jaws were perhaps the most hideous for their nearly human appearance, a pair of fleshy purplish lips rimmed with thick red blood. Its own blood—his darkness must have struck back and done damage. Beneath the head stretched a long twisted neck, and a pair of bony forelegs upon which the thing crouched. The heavy drag of a tail somewhere in the shadows.

The rattle was issuing from the creature's throat. Now it turned into a gurgle, a single staccato sound that might have been a syllable of sorts. It opened its mouth, revealing two rows of rotten and curled teeth.

"What are you?" Rumplestiltskin heard himself ask.

"Lal," rasped the monster. The yellow eyes flashed, their countless tiny flecks darting and whirling. "La, lo, lal, la, lal-lal-la-lo..."

Nothing else came. He could not tell if it was part of a human word or merely an animal cry.

Revulsion twisted his stomach. In the space of one breath, it had already shaded into something else, an uncontrollable need to remove the abomination from his sight. He had to destroy it, turn it into something small and easily crushed. So small that it would be invisible. The compulsion's strength was unlike anything he'd felt in years, filling the vacant space inside his chest before the habits of his rational mind could even begin to fight it down. Rumplestiltskin straightened.

"Not much of a conversationalist, are you?" said his voice. It was the one he was accustomed to from the Enchanted Forest, but sharper, tighter. The words must have been meant in some sorts of sarcasm; he had no idea why but they felt good. They felt right. He lifted his hand.

The monster gave a shriek, and leaped straight at him.

The burst of magic made its form quiver, but that was all. The creature tore right through, untransformed, and smashed into him for the second time. Another flare of pain as his back struck the ground. Claws sliced through his shirt and into the skin of his shoulder.

"Lal-la-la, lal, lo, lal..." The same not-even-syllable emerged in rapid succession. The demon, or whatever it was, bent over him, its face only a foot away from his own. It was smaller than he had previously thought, shorter than a grown human. The horrible lips curled, baring crooked fangs, and Rumplestiltskin fought back the urge to gag.

A flame blazed in his left shoulder, and the dark power within him reared, angry and as irresistible as a tidal wave. Whatever animated the thing before him must have made it resistant to direct magic, yet it could still bleed. It could still feel pain, and he could inflict pain. He could do a hundredfold worse than mere claws and teeth could. Of its own accord, magic gathered again into his right hand, this time pure physical force, coiling against his fingers with palpable strength. With a turn of his wrist, it surged forth, not straight at the monster but at the space around it. A roar or air, and the creature flew back with a satisfying crunch. Rocks and dust showered down.

Rumplestiltskin was on his feet before the creature could recover. Ignoring his throbbing shoulder, he backed rapidly into the mouth of the tunnel, a yard or two behind him. Through the cloud of debris, the monster's eyes shone wild like a pair of yellow lanterns. The guttural cry rose to a scream; there was no mind behind it, only agony. The lanterns gleamed, suddenly charging toward him, but Rumplestiltskin anticipated the move. A burst of force drove into the ceiling, and with a thunderous crack, the doorway between the cavern and the tunnel collapsed. The crashing of boulders and pillars drowned out the screeches. Faster than his conscious will could command, an instinctive wall of force flashed into existence, shielding him from the worst of the flying rubble. In a few seconds, the passage had sealed between himself and the creature.

It took far longer—a minute or so—before the walls stopped shaking. Reaching up to his left shoulder, Rumplestiltskin wiped a hand against the torn spot, and flinched. His palm came away sticky and dark. Somehow he could not concentrate enough to make it heal.

Never mind the wound, then. It would not kill him. Standing in the frigid tunnel, Rumplestiltskin allowed his breathes to even out. Perhaps it was the lull of insanity, or perhaps he was exhausted beyond caring at this point, but a strange calm began to rise over him. Here he was, in a prison that he would never escape, but the fear had vanished without a trace. Or maybe he had just realized that it did not matter.

"It doesn't matter..." he whispered to himself. That was it.

Everything made sense. Everything had at last grown so much simpler. This was the way it was meant to be.

The way it was meant to be. Keeping that thought in mind, he started to walk along the passage, letting his feet guide him forward. This realm was where the Dark One belonged. This was home, the familiarity of its magic whispered in reassurance. Hope had fallen from his eyes—it had blinded him for such an eternity—and without its distraction, he could now think of Belle and Gideon logically. He had fulfilled his plan and they were safe, from his mother and from him. And he, too, was safe now.

Safe from desperation, from heartbreak, from the futile cycles of striving and failing. Safe from all the things beyond his courage. Safe from ever again having to kneel and plead, a helpless beggar at the door of love. He would remain here forever.

That wasn't such a bad thing, was it?

He might have walked for hours, or it might have only been a few minutes. The tunnels spread to a maze, and his footfalls reverberated in the eerie silence, magnified by the chill air, until it sounded like others were walking alongside him, in the passages up ahead, behind, parallel. They drew nearer, invisible, in ones and twos, then several of them, then a crowd.

Abruptly, the tunnel widened. Rumplestiltskin found himself in another chamber, this one far larger, with a single opening on the other side, beyond which stretched a space that seemed to carry a different glimmer of its own. A rush of wind struck his face, dissipating the faint smell of dark fairy dust. The echoing throng halted with him.

"There's no point in hiding, dearies," he called out, though the hoarseness of his voice ruined the effect.

They appeared silently and swiftly like a band of ragged ghosts, surrounding him on all sides, almost instantly. Men, a few women among them, children of various ages, their clothing hanging ill-shaped over their frames. Their eyes were unreadable, though their jaws were tense with anxiety and determination. Torches, axes, hammers, pikes. Three or four of the larger men stood directly in his path.

Explaining himself or his presence would be rather difficult, of course. But then again, explanations would be of no use anyway.

"What are you?" asked one of the men facing him, armed with a crude hammer. He was probably still young, no more than twenty-five, though it was hard to tell for sure. Sandy blond hair draped over the forehead of a pale, thin-lipped face. A pair of prematurely aged gray eyes gazed out coldly.

"Excellent question," muttered Rumplestiltskin. What was he?

"Demon," answered another voice for him. Rumplestiltskin turned. A man stepped out from the group behind him, tall, hollow-cheeked, a short-handled axe in his bony hands.

"Perceptive, I see." Rumplestiltskin shrugged, then winced again. The epithet was hardly unknown to him, but it must carry some special property here, because as soon it was said, the power inside him awoke and snapped to attention. It let out an impatient hiss.

"Demon," repeated the other. "It's a demon, just like that other one. It looks the same. We need to kill it."

No one else spoke, but Rumplestiltskin could hear quick inhalations of breath, and hands straining against the handles of weapons. He could hear the heartbeats of every single person except himself in the cave.

"We must kill it, Marcus," insisted the man with the axe. "We must destroy it. Now."

The Dark One let out a cackle that only Rumplestiltskin heard. But the first man—Marcus, who seemed to be a leader among these people—shook his head.

"Did the Black Fairy send you?" he asked.

Only now did it occur to Rumplestiltskin exactly who these people were. But he had no time to work out the implications, because at the mention of his mother's name, ashes from another lifetime burned once more in his eyes. Nevertheless, a part of him still attempted to consider the question. It did not succeed.

"Actually, no," he replied with a laugh. "But I don't suppose you're friends of my mother's, or am I mistaken?"

Gasps like a current of electricity, ran through the circle around him. Even Marcus stared in shock. All of a sudden, the smell of blood invaded Rumplestiltskin's consciousness, far too overwhelming to be just from his own injury. His fingers twitched.

An axe swooshed toward his head from behind.

The darkness gave a joyous yell, drowning out all else instantly. Rumplestiltskin did not get a chance to think, or even to take in what was happening. The axe placed itself into his own right hand before he spun around, and his arm shot upward of its volition. The blade connected with a quiet thud. Out of the corner of his eye, he—or rather not he himself but the mad and infinite thing within—caught a glimpse of motion. He shifted swiftly, magic reaching ahead to meet the weapon that swung his way, ripping it into the air.

 _Rumple, no!_ shouted a woman. _Your heart! No!_

Someone must have stopped time. In the dead silence, a hammer fell to the ground.

He was in the middle of the frozen tableau, an axe raised, its red-smeared edge flat against the shoulder of the man who had attempted to interrogate him, an inch away from the neck. The other had gone absolutely still, eyes wide with terror. The entire crowd had gone absolutely still.

"My heart," said Rumplestiltskin. A body lay crumpled on the ground at his feet. What was this place? Why was he here?

"I have no heart," he retorted, though it wasn't any person present who had cried out to him. He must have blanked out. "What heart can I possibly have? What do you take me for?"

 _Rumple, hold on._

Rumplestiltskin blinked. He scanned the staring faces around him until he spotted a child to his left, thirteen or fourteen, dark-haired, frightened, almost in tears. Something about the boy reminded him of Bae at that age. He kept focusing on the child until he began to recall. He was in the Dark Realm. He was here because he belonged here.

 _Just hold on._

Only several seconds must have passed in reality. Rumplestiltskin dragged his gaze back to the axe he still clutched. Fresh gore was dripping from the blade. The impulse to flee rushed at him, and he barely managed to suppress it. After all, he could not transport away from this cave when he had no clue where to go.

"Marcus, is it?" The pitch of his voice twisted upward into a snarl. "Tell your friends to step aside and stay where they are, and I'll let you live. Do we have a deal?"

The other glowered back, the fear in his gray eyes already replaced by fury. But he did not attempt anything foolish.

"And everyone else?" he squeezed out from between clenched teeth.

 _Hold on._

"I said, I'll let you live. Second person plural," clarified Rumplestiltskin.

The man said nothing. No one said anything, but to both sides, the crowd began to part with shuffling footsteps.

"Shall we?"

The two of them took a step forward in unison. Rumplestiltskin maneuvered himself around Marcus, still pressing the axe against the man's neck. He did not actually need to keep it there, not for his own sake, but as far as he could tell, his control was terrifyingly tenuous in this world. If people took it upon themselves to get ideas, the situation would become far uglier very fast, and for now, he was himself enough to see children among the lot. It was better this way.

The weapon should not feel heavy to the Dark One, but it did, and his shoulder was hurting viciously again, but it could not be helped. One step after another, he walked with his hostage around the corpse on the floor, past the silent, sullen faces, and to the wide opening on the other side of the chamber. Another gush of wind brought a new scent, halfway between sulfur and dead water.

Another stride, and they emerged from the cave into the open night, or what felt like night. A starless sky hung overhead, thick with storm clouds that looked like they were made of black iron. They stood on a sloping hillside, the earth naked and covered with great gashes, but what appeared to be a forest lay in gloom some distance below. A vanguard of a few trees had crept halfway up the hill, twisted and bare-limbed. Beyond the forest was a low valley, shrouded in a heavy brownish fog.

"You will pay, demon," growled the man next to him.

Rumplestiltskin turned. Marcus glared back, defenseless yet refusing to show fear. Behind the man's head, a high tower of smooth dark stone rose at the top of the hill, its turrets like knife blades against the dim sky. It beckoned to him, murmuring his name. He recognized its voice. Far past the tower, other vast shadows crouched upon the horizon—an endless line of mountains like gigantic beasts. The stench of sulfur intensified.

 _Remember me._

"Keep walking," he commanded, looking aside. Get away from the tower. Put as much distance as he could between himself and the tower. He could no longer muster up the courage to do anything else.

They descended along a narrow path among the craggy boulders. Fortunately for his captive, the others were smart enough to carry out their end of the deal, and did not come out in pursuit. The tower's shadow fell behind them, yet Rumplestiltskin sensed its weight every step of the way, bearing down against his back. It was watching. The mother whom he had betrayed was watching. She was gone and dead. She was here, fully and oppressively present. He must get away from her. It did not matter where.

They reached the forest's edge. There were no verdure on the trees before them, only gnarled trunks and branches that wove together into uncanny and bleak nets. Thorns bristled. A creaking and groaning filled his ears. At last, Rumplestiltskin lowered the axe, letting it dangle from his hand.

"Your friend was an idiot," he said.

"I will avenge him, demon."

 _Remember yourself._

"What was his name?" asked Rumplestiltskin.

"You spilled his blood," snapped Marcus. "You will pay with blood."

"Maybe." He was in no mood for witty remarks. The forest, too, was taut with an all-too-familiar energy, but he would be out of the tower's sight under its cover. How much advantage would the Dark One gain here if he allowed its magic free rein? It would be dangerous to find out.

Well, at least he had a weapon.

"Where is the Black Fairy?"

The question was abrupt and angry, as if the one who asked it still held the advantage. It would be simple to answer, but Rumplestiltskin did not do so. He would not speak her name, not here. Not to one who hated her. Instead, he turned his back on the other man. Tightening his fingers on the axe handle, he took a moment to steady himself. Then he walked alone into the forest.

.

* * *

Note: The moment from the previous chapter, when Belle saw a new strand of darkness leaping across Rumple's heart, corresponds to the moment Rumple ran into his mother's former slaves, and killed the man with the axe. The intermittent words he half heard inside his mind were, of course, Belle's from the end of the last chapter.

I apologize for adding another human life to Rumple's tally at this point. It was in self-defense, but he did also lose control of the darkness inside him at that moment. The Dark Realm is the darkness's "home turf", so to speak, and it will be much, much harder for Rumple to control here.

For this fic, time in the Dark Realm still runs somewhat faster than in other, "normal" worlds, but only by a little, and nothing like the 1 day = 28 years rate that seemed to be implied from the show. (For one thing, Rumple would have to be over a year in the Dark Realm before he heard Belle's words if that were the case.) The fact that on the show, a 28-year old Gideon returned to Storybrooke only a day or so after he was stolen can be chalked up to some special magic of the Black Fairy's. For instance, she might have somehow managed to return him (and herself) specifically to an earlier moment in Storybrooke's timeline.

I am very thankful to Ethereal_Wishes for beta-reading.


	8. Blue

_._

 **Blue**

.

.

 _In the unlikely event that you see me again, use the dagger to_ _banish_ _me once more to the_ _place_ _from which I have_ _escaped_ _._

The sentence atop the notebook page was in her own handwriting, with three words heavily underscored. Belle stared down at it, motionless, same as she'd done for the past fifteen minute, though it was not as if she actually needed to look at it. Every line of Rumplestiltskin's letter was already carved into her brain by a knife blade. Below the sentence were a few more disjointed lines, notes she had scribble down three weeks ago. That was when she had hit a wall.

 _-banish: he saw it as banishment  
_ _-place: specific, not just "out there"  
_ _(did he know where? probable)  
_ _-escape: leaving the place was escape  
_ _(a prison?)_

These were all she had, a few words in the way Rumple had phrased his message. If she squinted hard enough, she could believe they afforded her a glimpse into his frame of mind when he had written them, and into what he had known. Almost nothing to go on, nothing to hold onto. But she had to go on. She had to hold on.

The letters were already blurring again before her sleep-deprived eyes. It had been nearly two months since she returned from the mines with Gideon in her arms, and she had made nearly no progress whatsoever. There were only his final handful of words and the final flickering images, replaying themselves over and over like an old grainy film reel inside the dim spaces of her mind, until she thought she must be the one who was going mad.

 _-Avoidable? Unavoidable?  
_ _-Was it forced by another act?  
_ _Killing the Black Fairy?  
_ _Finding Gideon's heart?_ _Turning him back?  
_ _-How? Why?  
_ _-Was there another trap to Gideon's heart? (But he knew ahead)  
_ _-Did he choose it?_

She could not get around this last question no matter how she tried. Belle shivered as the memories invaded once more, the palpable chains of magic dragging her husband out of her arms, out of her sight, out of her world. If the forces that took Rumple were necessary and inevitable consequences of other acts, other parts of his plan, then she might reason her way to more clues, more paths toward the truth. But she could not be certain even of this.

She could not even keep from wondering if he had simply walked out on the two of them, if the whole fading-out-of-existence had been nothing but a mere charade to throw her off the scent. He had fought for her and for their son, and he had brought Gideon back. Maybe it was another trick of the darkness, wrapping its tendrils around his mind, whispering that it was enough for her, that it was the only thing she could ever want from him. Or maybe it was his own decision. Maybe it was simply enough for him. Maybe he was living a whole different life now, out there in New York or Boston or the next town down the road. She could—if she but knew—get into the car, drive to his front doorstep, march inside and grab him by the suit lapels. She could yell or demand, or reason, or plead. She could put everything back together. She could do absolutely nothing whatsoever.

She could not allow such imaginings to run rampant. Firmly, Belle laid a palm flat onto the notebook, as if the sensation of pressure against the paper would give her some tangible connection to rationality and hope. With an effort, she brought her thoughts back to the mines, to the memories of Rumple's ragged breaths and his hoarse words. At the time, he had not appeared in control of whatever was happening to him. For all the lies he had told her in the past, she must now operate on the assumption that what she'd seen had been real. It would be impossible to continue otherwise.

He would never willingly abandon Gideon, would he? If she ever knew anything about him, this would be what she knew. Unless...

 _You will never even set eyes on this child,_ said a voice, strong and brave like only a mother could be, fierce with righteous conviction. It was her own.

"Damn it, Rumple," said Belle out aloud, both of her hands tight against the edge of the desk. The sound of his name hung in the late afternoon hush. She did not know what else to say, and it wasn't as if he could hear her anyway. Even if she took his heart out of its box, clasped it tightly in both her hands and shouted at it at the top of her lungs, he would probably not hear her.

In his cradle across the room, Gideon let out a small snuffle. Rising automatically, Belle went over to the kitchen to start his bottle. The half-muffled whimper would turn into outright howling in a minute or so, but she was thankful for the interruption. The baby's cries increased in pitch and volume, but soon enough, the bottle was ready. It soothed the screams almost instantly. Carrying Gideon in her arms and crooning softly to him, she walked several times around the living room, letting sensation gradually returned to her deadened legs. Eventually, she was able to go back to her desk and the open notebook, her son still nestled against her breast.

 _-Another realm?  
_ _-Neverland? (_ _His father, was there before)  
_ _-Dark Realm: connection with the Black Fairy?  
_ _(Her wand? He used it to destroy her)  
_ _-Underworld?  
_ _-nightmare realms? How many  
_ _-other realms without magic?  
_ _-other, darker versions of Enchanted Forest?_

There were so many worlds. Some books said thousands, some said thousands of thousands, some said innumerable. Even for the greatest of sorcerers, it would take a hundred lifetimes to search through even a fraction of them.

Well, she would have to first narrow them down to realms that Rumple had known, or had some connection to. It was not much of a strategy—not to mention that she hadn't even started on about how to get into any of them—but it was better than nothing. Propping her forehead on one hand, Belle rubbed her temple slowly. A headache was beginning to coil and knot, tapping against her skull, insistent. She frowned, attempting to drive it away with a few deep breaths. The tapping paused, then restarted itself, a steady but exasperating rhythm that would not stop.

It was coming from the direction of the front door.

Quickly, Belle closed the notebook and thrust it into the desk drawer, next to the wooden box that hid her husband's heart and his wedding ring. A turn of the key locked the drawer. It did not afford much protection, not in a place like Storybrooke, but she could not do any better. Gideon had fallen back to peaceful slumber. Rising and crossing the room, Belle laid him back down into the cradle, then went to answer the door.

The Mother Superior of Storybrooke's very own order of not-really-nuns was standing on the narrow landing outside, a picture of quiet serenity in her usual prim dark dress and gentle smile.

"May I come in?"

"Oh." It took Belle a moment to adjust herself to the other's presence. "Yes, of course."

The Blue Fairy stepped inside. She glanced quickly around the apartment, then returned her gaze to the younger woman's face. Belle managed a tiny sheepish grin. She must look awful, clad in an old dressing-gown, bleary-eyed and with her hair in a tangle from intermittent sleep.

"Is that...Gideon?" The fairy indicated toward the cradle with a tilt of her head. She waited until Belle nodded. "May I look at him?"

"Um, of course." Belle led the other across the room. Gideon lay on his back against the cradle's pastel blue bedding, tranquilly asleep, with only an occasional twitch in his little arms and legs. The Blue Fairy stood staring down at the infant for what seemed like an endless while, though in truth it could not have been more than several seconds.

"He looks very different from the last time I saw him," she whispered at last.

"Yeah." Belle wasn't sure how to reply to this, but the head fairy inclined her head in understanding. The two of them moved away from the cradle and over to the kitchen, at the opposite corner of the apartment. Some notion of social conventions filtered up vaguely to Belle's consciousness.

"Would you like, er, some tea?"

The Blue Fairy shook her head. Taking a seat next to the kitchen table, she motioned Belle to the chair beside her.

"My child," she began after the other sat down. "I want to tell you that you will always find help with us, should you ever need it at any time."

"Oh," For a flash, Belle actually considered what kind of help the other was offering, or what kind of help she might possibly ask for. The head fairy possessed a powerful magic, as well as vast experience and wisdom. Might she know something of what happened to her husband? If she did—

"Thank you," she said. "I am very grateful for your kindness."

"These must be difficult days for you, my child."

Abrupt tears pricked Belle's eyes. She bit her lips.

"But at least you are now free to raise your son the right way," continued the Blue Fairy. "You must take comfort in that."

"Free," repeated Belle, not immediately comprehending the word.

"You're free." The Blue Fairy leaned forward. There was only the barest trace of fervor in her voice. "Yes, you've made your mistakes, dear child, but those mistakes were born of your innate goodness. You are full of light, Belle, but perhaps..." She paused, pensive. "Perhaps so much light can be blinding. Perhaps it made you see the Dark One as other than what he was, see things in him that weren't there."

"Wait," interrupted Belle in confusion. "Just wait. I saw in Rumple—"

"Yet in the end, you saw the truth. Your own actions showed me that much, not so long ago. And it is over now. You are no longer bound to him."

"But that's not—But I—" Belle swallowed back the rest of her reply. It had taken her halfway through the head fairy's speech before she'd even begun to figure out what it meant. A bubble of something—hysterical laughter, maybe—was expanding inside her chest, choking off all explanations, threatening to burst any instant. Frantically, she clamped down on it, inhaled sharply, and met the other's eyes straight on.

"Where is Rumplestiltskin?" she asked, point-blank. Her tone sounded more-or-less steady to her own ears. Good.

"The Dark One is gone. From what I have learned." There was a brief delay before the fairy answered, no more than a fraction of a second. "What matters is that you no longer have to live in fear."

"But where?"

"I can say this to you, my child," said the Blue Fairy quietly. "If the Dark One ever returns, all the forces of good in this town will unite to defend you against him. Do not be afraid."

"I'm not afraid."

"You're right, of course." The other gave a nod of acknowledgement. "I saw myself your strength, your determination to free yourself and your child. And you've won. Please, believe me that the Dark One will never find his way back. He will never find a way to take this hard-earned victory from you. I will not allow it. No one who knows you in this town will allow it."

Every syllable out of the fairy's mouth was completely sincere, realized Belle with a sickening twist in her guts. She held herself still, fighting back the overwhelming impulse to grab the other by the shoulders and to scream. Suddenly, she could no longer face the other's gaze. Turning aside for a moment, she let her sight fall across the room. A book was lying there on the desk, visible at one corner of the surface, a slim octavo in which she had found several references to realms of nightmares and other horrors. It was shut, and no title or other markings were present on the brown leather cover, nor on the binding. All the other volumes she'd been researching were put away downstairs in the library.

"Gideon," she said, quickly looking away from the desk. "He's Gideon's father."

"Gideon will be safe as well," said the Blue Fairy with conviction. "But in fact, he is also part of what I came to talk to you about."

Trepidation reared within her, but Belle said nothing. She waited.

"He is the Dark One's son," began the Blue Fairy, gently enough. "The blood of Pan and of the Black Fairy live within his veins."

"Gideon's seven weeks old." Belle tensed. "He's innocent. He's just a baby."

"Well, not exactly." The head fairy sighed softly. "Gideon's twenty-eight years and seven weeks old. He is very fortunate to be given a second chance by the Savior, but all those years' worth of terrible darkness cannot be erased so simply. I do want you to understand this, Belle."

"Do you mean that..." She did not finish. The memories of Gideon's previous life, realized Belle. Whether they might eventually reappear was something she had not yet dared to contemplate.

"I mean that it is something we should not forget."

"You said darkness." Belle squeezed her eyes shut for a second as she focused her thoughts. "And that it would not be erased. All those things that happened to him, are you saying that they still remain, and that they would still affect him? That Gideon will...that he will turn to a dark path?"

"No, not that he _will_. I cannot tell you the exact future, for that is beyond the foresight of any of us," said the other with a small shake of the head. "It will be a risk for him."

"So will it for all human beings."

"Do not be angry with me for speaking the truth to you, dear child." The Blue Fairy offered Belle another smile, yet her eyes did not waver. "But do not lose hope, either. He is your son, too. Not to speak of what the Savior did for him, for her sacrifice has connected him to her as well. He has the chance to go to the light, though as I said, he will meet with great dangers in his life, perhaps more so than many others will. After all, when light is stained by darkness..."

Her voice trailed off.

"When light is stained...?" asked Belle after a heartbeat.

"Though needless to say, the issue will not arise yet, not for years." It was not quite an answer to the prompt. "I thought you should know, Belle. I only came to say that we must be on guard, and be prepared. And bring him up in light instead. But I must not keep you away from him any longer."

The Blue Fairy stood up, and Belle did as well, not knowing what else to say. She felt utterly outmatched: it was clearly impossible to gain any further information. Without speaking, she accompanied the other on her way out. At the front door, the head fairy stopped and glanced back at the cradle across the room.

"There is one more thing. I think." For the first time, there was a note of hesitation in her tone, and something akin to sadness mingled with the compassion of her face. "I think you should have Gideon's vision examined. By your pediatrician, maybe?"

The world froze.

"What is wrong with Gideon's vision?" After an infinite silence, Belle heard her own voice. It was nearly inaudible even to herself.

"I'm not sure. It is probably a matter best left to the doctors." The Blue Fairy had already opened the apartment door and stepped through. But then she turned once more.

"By the way," she said, "I've been curious about something else. The Black Fairy's wand."

"Wand," muttered Belle numbly. It was the only word she heard. Sort of.

"Rumplestiltskin had possession of it in his pawnshop, I believe. You wouldn't happen to know what became of it, would you?"

Forcibly, Belle made one final effort to collect herself. The three pieces of the Black Fairy's wand were tucked safely away inside one of Rumple's safes, over at the salmon-colored Victorian house. She had picked them up on the first of the few trip to the pawnshop she'd managed so far. They were the only other clue she had.

"It...All I found were ashes," she said. "It must have fallen apart. There was nothing left."

"I see." The Blue Fairy nodded, then reached across and laid a hand lightly against Belle's arm. "Please, remember what we talked about today. We'll be in touch."

For a long while after she disappeared downstairs, Belle remained standing rooted to the spot, gripping the door frame until her fingers hurt.

Two days later, she sat in Doc's office, holding Gideon while the pediatrician slowly waved a penlight in front of her baby's face. The examination stretched out with the ticking of the clock. Left. Right. Left again. Her heart sank a little further with every motion. Up. Down. Right. Left. Doc leaned in close, moving the light right up to Gideon's eyes. Right again. Down. Up. Finally, he straightened, and turned to her.

"Belle," he began, then paused to choose his words. Just a short pause, but it told her everything.

Doc did his best to explain. At this age, it was still impossible to make a definite diagnosis. There were no visible physical symptoms, though deeper scans could eventually be performed. Possible delayed visual maturation. Specialists in Boston, and in other cities. Belle did her best to follow along. She grasped for each phrase, each glimmer of hope he offered, but it was no use. The rising coldness, a knowledge as true and as inexorable as an ocean tide, refused to be pushed back down. The Blue Fairy had noticed, at a glimpse, something about Gideon's sight, and she was right.

This was not a medical condition.

All the way home from Doc's office, she kept repeating her usual mantras. She must stay strong for her son. She must stay strong for her husband. She must stay rational. She must stay fighting. The words turned to incantations, carrying their own rhythm, circling inside her brain, yet she could no longer discern any meaning in them. She must go on. She must hold on.

Back at the apartment, she changed Gideon, fed and burped him, bathed him, and laid him on her own bed. Exhaustion caught up with her, and after the first sob, she could no longer stop. She could no longer even stand.

"Oh, Gideon, my baby..."

Kneeling on the floor next to the bed, she rested her head on the pillow beside her son. Gideon gave a low gurgle, blissfully unaware of anything wrong, and held up one tiny perfect hand toward her voice. Belle reached for it, touching it with her own.

"I miss your papa so much, Gideon, so much...What am I going to do?"

The delicate little hand curled around her index finger.

She must have cried herself to sleep, for she dreamt.

In her dream—or vision, for it was far more vivid and real than any dream could be—she was soaring high above the ground, beneath a sky ablaze with stars. The evening wind, fresh and tender with the scent of verdure, brushed against her face and fanned out her hair behind her. She turned in flight, and caught sight of a high tower of pure white stone at the top of a grassy hill, its turrets sharp against the firmament, luminous with the golden glow of a thousand lamps. Far past the tower, a vast mountain range stretched upon the horizon, crowned with glistening snow.

She swept downward, following the breeze. The lower part of the hill was covered by a deep forest, and beyond it a green valley, veiled in pale wisps of mist. Hovering above the trees, she strained her gaze against the rustling canopy, but the leaves were thick upon the branches, hiding all that lay underneath from view.

"Rumplestiltskin!" she called out. The sound of her voice echoed and re-echoed in the silence. _Rumplestiltskin! Rumplestiltskin!_

He did not answer, but he was there. The awareness fell upon her like dawn upon the night. Her husband was here, in this forest, beneath these trees. Doubt fled, shadows fled, ripped to shreds by the perfect clarity of her thoughts. He was here. She would find him. She dove down, the air roaring in her ears—

Belle awoke suddenly, her heart pounding. She was still in Storybrooke, aching knees on her bedroom floor, her baby boy asleep on the bed next to her. Her husband was still in another world.

A world that she just glimpsed.

Carefully, Belle drew her finger out of Gideon's grasp, while struggling to calm her racing pulse. She had been given a vision. Of this she was absolutely certain, though she knew not what magic had brought it to her. Countless worlds existed, but she had seen the one that took Rumple. She had seen its stars, its tower atop the hill, its forest.

Now all she needed to do was to find it, that forest in the night.

Courage returned like a flame, burning inside her very bones. No matter how long and difficult the road ahead remained, it would lead her to him. She would get there. And if magic granted her a glimpse of where she needed to go, then it could also grant her a way to recover Gideon's sight. She would find Rumplestiltskin, bring him home, and they would find a cure for their son. Gideon deserved to see both his parents, together and with his own eyes. And she would make sure of it, even if it took the rest of her life.

.

* * *

Notes: Once again, I must apologize. I'm really sorry for throwing another piece of terrible news at Belle here. Gideon's visual impairment is a magical condition, and it will definitely be cured. It will actually also play a big role in the plot. At this point, as an infant, he really wouldn't have noticed it yet himself.

Belle's dream/vision at the end of this chapter may be a little confusing. What she saw, of course, looked nothing like the Dark Realm, or at least the Dark Realm we've seen, nevertheless, it was not a false vision. For now, I can only say that it will actually throw her off the scent for a while, but she will eventually figure out what she saw, and why she saw it the way she did.

The last time someone talked about "When light is stained by darkness" was in Chapter 4.

As always, I am very thankful to Ethereal_Wishes for beta-reading.


	9. Exile

.

 **Exile**

.

.

His sense of time was the first thing that went.

He had been here for only a few days, or an entire year. Did it feel like a century? Did it feel like a brief month or two? It was impossible to tell. After all, this world had no sun, no moon, no wheeling stars, no passage of seasons. It possessed only ghost-flames in the bogs, and an eternal dance of shadows. The trees of the forest—were they trees?—swapped places behind his back. Sometimes they reached for him with their branches, clinging and mocking. Sometimes they lashed at him. Sometimes they murmured his name. Sometimes they screamed.

He hung on to his axe. Sometimes he had to defend himself against wild things that could not be called animals, half protruding bones, half rotting flesh. Sometimes he swung at the trees. Branches and dangling vines would pull back swiftly for a moment or two, but soon enough, they would stretch forward once more. This was one thing about them that never changed.

The magic pressing against his skin did not change. It was so much heavier here, and incessant. Within, without. If he relaxed his guard but for an instant, magic would pierce him everywhere. It would dissolve him.

The stony tower upon the hill did not change. Sometimes the trees would part, permitting him a glimpse of it between their twisted limbs. Unlike everything else in this land, the tower always kept perfectly still.

"Mother?" called Rumplestiltskin. "Mother, are you here?"

Up among the storm clouds, some invisible creature howled shrilly. The Black Fairy offered no reply. But then, after a second or after an eon, someone else did, very softly.

 _Rumple, Gideon needs you. I need you._

Beneath his feet, the ground shifted abruptly, another game it liked to play. The movement knocked him to his knees, but Rumplestiltskin did not notice. He fought to catch his breath.

"Belle?" he cried out. "Belle? Is that you?"

"Well, of course. A rather idiotic question, don't you think?" piped up another woman's voice behind him, this one louder, more real. To his own horror, Rumplestiltskin recognized it faster than he did Belle's.

Some part of his rational self yet remained, though, enough for him to pull his walls together, at least a little.

"Milah," he said carefully, rising to his feet. "Show yourself."

"Is that you last little wife I hear?" A laugh. She was still at his back, but nearer. "What's her name again? Elle, is it? Ella? Bella?"

He spun around. She stayed unseen.

"Do not speak of her," snarled Rumplestiltskin. The chill air constricted inside his lungs.

Milah snickered, and sauntered out from a tangle of thorns in front of him. She was clad in her pirate's leather and gaudy trinkets, looking just the same as the last time he'd seen her alive, except for the pallor of her face and the glitter of phosphorus in her eyes. Her gaze appraised him, up and down, and she wrinkled her nose in distaste at his ragged clothes and matted hair.

"Did you love her, Rumple?" she asked. It sounded for all the world like idle curiosity. "Did she love you?"

He held himself motionless, breathing in, breathing out. He had seen ghosts aplenty in his past.

"Mind your own business, Milah."

"Pretty little voice, I must say." She pretended not to hear him. "Now...What did she want from you, I wonder? What was that word she used?"

"Need." Rumplestiltskin heard the muttered response, though he did not understand why. He did not have to reply. He did not want to reply. "She needs me."

"Ah. Not love, then?"

He could not say anything immediately.

"Why the hell do you care?"

"Oh, just making sure you don't confuse the two." Milah shrugged, her tone parodying sympathy. "It's an easy mistake for the weak to make, after all."

If he took two or more strides forward, he would be within reach of her, the thought came to Rumplestiltskin. Close enough to rip her heart out all over again. A needle pricked him, and suddenly magic was the only thing he was aware of, rearing, slamming against his consciousness, wanting out.

"Don't you worry, dearie." He clenched his teeth. This must be a trick. "I know that necessity never makes anyone love, believe me."

"That sure wasn't what you thought before," sneered the apparition. "Learned your lesson, Rumple?"

The shadows flickered, and the mast of that damned pirate ship swayed before his eyes. He stood on deck, glowering into his wife's face. He stood ashore, and it wasn't Milah who was facing off against the Dark One, brave and determined before the beast. _Threats will not make me love you again._ No, Milah wasn't there at all, not in that particular nightmare. She had been dead and lost for ages, and never in Storybrooke. _But necessity will._ She couldn't have known.

"You're not here," he said. "You're not even a ghost. You're inside my head. I'm making you up, aren't I?"

The smirk turned to stone on Milah's face. But she recovered quickly.

"It's not even you she needs, Rumplestiltskin. Only your magic. That's all the use she ever had for you. Only your—"

"Darkness," he cut her off, stiffening his back. "I know that."

"And she has her happy ending now, one that does not include you," returned Milah. She shook her head, and her form began to fade, evaporating into nonexistence as swiftly as it had appeared. Only a final parting shot reverberated across the gloom.

"For what woman would find happiness in _you_?"

That was the first time the dead came. Milah returned a day—a minute? A week?—later, with other mockeries and other epithets. Old ones from another life, but she made him remember them. The trees and the ground and the inky sky picked up her words and repeated them, an uproarious, many-parted chorus that went on and on, and after a while he found himself joining them, too.

He would always hear Milah first, without seeing her. How long the game of hide-and-seek lasted would depend on her mood, and she bore many moods. She jeered and teased, sang, threatened, yelled in fury. She was a mirage. She was solid and ablaze with power.

Then the others started to show up, emboldened by Milah's successes and wanting their shares of the fun. A man, middle-aged and common, stuttering, helpless, face sheet-white with terror. He pointed a shuddering finger, and the air choked in Rumplestiltskin's chest. A tall, angry young man with a drawn sword. A slim, angry young woman, who spoke endlessly and with infinite determination, of evil, of monsters, of stain and rot. Another young woman, ruddy-haired with shy, frightened eyes, who spoke nothing at all. She merely prowled the periphery of his vision, watching and watching and watching. He could not recall her name no matter how hard he racked his brains. He could not recall any of their names.

A band of men, rough and wild-eyed, grunting and swearing in the accents of the Frontlands. They surrounded him from every side. The booze on their breathes was tinged with the smell of blood.

"Powerless again, huh, Spinner?" One of them—sable-cloaked, hair closely cropped in a soldier's cut—backhanded him in the chest. The others hollered in glee, closing in.

"The nasty, disgusting monster. Just look at him!"

"Still a coward, though. Nothing'll change _that_!"

A clink of metal. Power crackled at the back of Rumplestiltskin's mind. Its pressure mounted and mounted, until he forgot that each and every one of them, each insult, each shove, was nothing but illusions of his own inventions. This was a trick, all of it. Yet he could no drive them away.

The dead came and went. They hunted him, stalking his footsteps, but none of the living ever appeared. It was never the living, though occasionally—very occasionally—he would imagine that he heard a heartbeat, and the fragments of words that still possessed warmth.

 _Rumple, you saved Gideon. You saved our son. But..._

"Oh, did you, Rumple?" interrupted Milah out of nowhere. "Surely that cannot be right. You don't have it in you."

"Belle!" Rumplestiltskin raised his voice to drown out the hallucination. He had wandered to the forest's edge, and the valley lay outspread below, swirling with dank fog.

 _But there is something I must tell you about him._

"You didn't save _my_ son. You never did have it in you."

"Shut up, Milah!" He strained his sight, searching, and saw only marsh fires. "Belle! Where are you, Belle?"

The wind returned, nothing else.

"Belle!" he shouted again. "What is it? What is it about Gideon?"

"Her son is much better off without you," commented Milah. "You would have corrupted him, made him just like you. That was why she—"

"No! Belle! What is wrong with Gideon? Tell me!"

"She was deluded for a long time, Rumple, but in the end, she saw you for what you were." Milah halted, and waited a beat for effect. "Just like I did."

"No!"

The roar tore out of him, much louder than his flagging strength allowed. Rumplestiltskin did not move, not consciously, but before he knew it, he was already only two feet away from Milah. He reached forward, fingers ripping into her chest. They closed upon a handful of empty space.

"Not anymore, Rumple." Milah smiled. For the first time, he saw a flicker of sorrow in her eyes. "There's nothing more you can do. I no longer have a heart to crush."

Thunder rattled overhead like a skyful of dry bones. The phantom dissolved, leaving him crouched on the ground, alone, trembling with rage and panic. Darkness expanded, surging from the boulders beneath him. He had to go seek vengeance. He had to escape. He had to tear down this world, and every other world, with his bare hands if necessary. He would banish away the dead. He would make them pay. All of them.

He could not hold it back. He could not hold any of it back.

"Belle," he begged. "Belle..."

He might have heard something, but could not comprehend even a single word. _Do you remember me, Rumple?_

"Remember me," he repeated mechanically. Once, a long way in the past, she had told him to remember her. "Remember me. Remember me..."

It was like no incantation he had ever learned or attempted before, but slowly, inch by inch, Rumplestiltskin clawed his way back from the brink.

Eventually, time must have flowed again. Eventually he grabbed onto a floating piece of himself. Eventually, he managed to make his way back to the hill above the fairy dust mines. The tower was as lifeless and cold as ever, no lamplight lit its windows, but a few small huts of clay and coarse brick huddled on the slope, just above the tunnel entrance. His memories kept slipping like water, but he thought—he might have remembered—these huts hadn't been there before.

An age passed before he glimpsed the existence of living human beings. The men, women and children who had once toiled for the Black Fairy clung close to the remnants of her presence, as if for protection against every other hissing, shrieking things that grew here. He vaguely recognized one of them from far away, perhaps the young man whom he had once, an eon ago, captured and held hostage. There was a short beard on his face now.

Another age passed before he dared to creep near the huts. He waited until none of the people could be seen nearby. He could not risk letting the magic out, not in this realm, therefore he could not risk getting caught.

He got caught.

As he wended his way back past the mine entrance, a pair of glowing yellow eyes emerged at his back. Rumplestiltskin did not sense the creature's presence until it was almost upon him, but he spun around just in time. The demon squatted on its haunches, ready to spring. Around the fathomless reptile pupils of its eyes, countless flocks of living darkness swam up toward him, and for a dizzying moment, it was as if he was staring into a mirror.

"Lo, la, la-lo-lo-lal..." rasped the creature.

The Dark One growled in unison with the thing facing him, its force straining against the skin of his hands and the tattered bonds of his will. Rumplestiltskin gritted his teeth until black flames danced before his sight, but it was hopeless. He could no longer withstand it.

 _I found something today, Rumple. Something of yours. Hold onto hope._

Rumplestiltskin did not even manage to recognize the one who spoke. But somehow he did manage to hold on.

"Remember me, dearie?" he asked, baring his teeth. Each syllable dragged like a hill's worth of stones.

He had been reduced to a pathetic thing, but at least he still knew how to bluff, it appeared. The dark flecks in the pair of yellow eyes swirled into a storm, and the pupils shrank with fear. The demon backed away a step, then another. Rumplestiltskin stood his ground.

The creature cowered, then slunk away. Only after its form disappeared completely back into the tunnel's hollow maw, did Rumplestiltskin begin to run. He slid down the slope, missing the trail, while rough rocks ripped at his limbs. He fell and stumbled back to his feet.

"Running away, as usual," commented Milah. "Nothing would ever give you courage..."

 _Give me courage,_ said the echo. Except it was not an echo. It did not sound like Milah at all.

He fled onward, into the forest, out of the forest and across the valley. When he finally turned his head, the horizon was already invisible in the night, and the Black Fairy's tower had melted into the shadows. Yet it was still next to him. On top of him. It weighted as much as all the mountains combined.

"Mother," he murmured. "Mother. You're here."

There was nothing between him and the tower, no distance even if he ran a thousand miles.

"Mother!" shouted Rumplestiltskin. "Answer me!"

She refused to speak. She has been refusing to speak to him for centuries.

"Answer me, Mother! Please! You are here. I know you are here!"

He could almost sense her presence. Almost, but not quite. She was long gone, nothing but ashes. She was right here, at his side, pounding against the walls of reality.

"Mother! Answer me!" he must have screamed until the taste of sulfur and blood filled his throat. "Please, Mother...Forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."

"She's dead, you ungrateful brat," snapped a youthful voice.

His father was beside him, the same fresh-faced boy as always. Rumplestiltskin drew in a shallow breath. He wanted to stand straighter, but couldn't. He wanted stop shuddering but couldn't.

"Well, you don't look so good, son, if you don't mind me saying so." Pan quirked an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Why what?" asked Rumplestiltskin after a pause, despite himself.

"This world." The teenager waved an indignant hand around them. "Your mother made a life here, built it into her home and domain. She _ruled_ here, as a queen. And you? Helpless and pitiful! Why?"

Rumplestiltskin dropped his gaze. He was clothed in what he'd stolen from his mother's former slaves. A battered gray coat, a pair of shapeless work boots. A dull axe, a chipped knife.

"I can't," he said.

"You don't have to be like this, like an animal in the wilderness. You still have your magic. You still have your darkness. This realm could be prison or kingdom. It only depends on you."

"I can't use magic here."

"You're afraid." Pan rolled his eyes. "You're always afraid. Afraid of your own powers, of what you are. Same old story of your life."

 _You're still you,_ retorted another voice, that of a woman, with a gentleness that did not belong to the Dark Realm. _You still remain yourself._

"I must remain myself," replied Rumplestiltskin, lifting his eyes. "I can't let my magic out. The darkness is too strong here."

"Everything is too strong for you. It's because you are weak."

"I must fight it."

"You were ready to embrace the darkness!" spat his father. "But you couldn't go through with it in the end. You didn't have the guts."

"That's not true!"

"Oh?" The eternal boy tilted his head, seemingly having just scored a point. "Then tell me, son, what happened? How did you kill the almighty Black Fairy? How did someone like you get to defeat her?"

"It was Mother...She..." began Rumplestiltskin. Then the words died in his mouth.

Silence. Pan folded his arms across his chest. At last, Rumplestiltskin recovered the will to make himself breathe again.

"I must fight it," he repeated.

"Why?"

He did not know why.

"What's the point?" Pan's lips curled, incredulous. "Do you actually think you'll win? That it will end? Do you actually think you'll ever get out of here? Go back to that wife of yours? You abandoned her and she will not take you back. It's over."

"I know it's over," said Rumplestiltskin. Then, doggedly, "But I must."

"Your mother would have been ashamed of you."

Yes, she would have been.

"She wasted her love on you." The imaginary teenager's eyes blazed. "She threw away her life for you. It wasn't for this!"

Turning on his heels, Pan stalked away, too contemptuous to spare him another backward glance. After a while—probably a long while, not that he could tell—Rumplestiltskin, too, started to walk.

He chose the direction opposite to the tower, as much as he could still consciously choose anything. The dead pursued him. They followed as he wandered the wasteland, taking their turns to taunt, cry, stare. They were total strangers, and so familiar.

"Unnatural demon," said a young woman.

"Beast," said a young man.

"She loved you," sighed his father.

"She's finally free of you," chortled Milah.

 _There were so many doubts, so many regrets._

This time, Rumplestiltskin almost confused the faint voice inside his head with Milah's. He almost began to forget.

"I don't want to forget," he chanted to himself, again and again. If he shut his eyes tightly, the names would resurface for a bit. Belle. Gideon. Baelfire, whose ghost, unlike the others, never returned.

"I don't want to forget you. I don't want to forget you..."

He had no idea for how long he walked. He must have crossed a wide plain, and scores of dried-up riverbeds. A new range of mountains rose to meet him, and in its foothills sat a new forest. The trunks of its trees loomed like an army of lost soldiers, rank after rank, and leafless branches angled against the clouds. But after he finally approached, Rumplestiltskin saw that there were no tree trunks, no branches. It was no forest before him, but the remains of something ancient and man-made, something that once, many millennia ago, might have been beautiful.

The ruined city spread like a labyrinth, criss-crossed with desiccated canals. He trod into one of them, and brittle things crunched beneath his feet. Bleached-out human bones. The wind whistled, only occasionally mingled with the scuttling of unseen small creatures. Broken columns lined the paths, which must have been wide avenues in another age, brightly-lit, bustling with life. He passed charred walls, headless statues marked with sword and fire. None of them could ever tell their stories again.

He was alone. Even his tormentors had abandoned him.

All strength spent, Rumplestiltskin's legs faltered. He stopped beneath a tall, half-collapsed gateway, maybe once a triumphal arch, maybe the entrance to a glittering palace. Slumping against the still-intact masonry, he slid down to a sitting position, and lowered his head against his knees. A few yards away, the jagged stump of a pillar stood watch over him, its silence infinite, until it seemed like someone was there, waiting patiently.

"Dark One," he mumbled without raising his head.

"Yes, that's you, dearie," said the pillar with a high-pitched little giggle.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"What I wanted, all my life...The flickers of light, the ones I loved. I reached for them, yet all that I touched..." He struggled for the words. "Turned to dust. Why? Why am I so weak?"

"You're asking me?" The other side of himself snorted. "You must be even farther gone than I guessed, dearie."

"Why is this my fate? Why am I condemned?"

A silence. Then he heard a laugh, one that he knew too well, loud and sarcastic.

"Condemned," the Dark One mimicked. "Take a good, hard look around you! Many are condemned who are more innocent than you. Entire worlds, in fact, and did anyone ever ask why? But as usual, all you can see is yourself—"

Rumplestiltskin opened his eyes. No one else was here. The Dark One was only himself. Exhaustion washed over him. Curling his body beneath the archway, he closed his eyes once more.

It was a dream instead of a hallucination this time. He dreamt of another living presence, a very small figure clambering over the ruins toward him on unsteady toddler legs. Then a childish voice queried next to his ear, hesitant, barely audible, but perfectly distinct.

"Papa?"

.

* * *

Note: Once again, my apologies for inflicting yet more torments on Rumple. The Dark Realm does things to one's sanity. It will start to go uphill from here on, I promise.

As always, I am very thankful to Ethereal_Wishes for beta-reading.


	10. Heart

_._

 **Heart**

.

.

 _"Rumple, Gideon needs you. I need you."_

The next three words, which used to come so easily to her, got stuck inside. One short simple sentence, once as natural as walking on the ground or breathing air. Now it pounded at her throat like the most complicated thing in the world. I love you.

Belle sat at the desk in her apartment, her husband's heart cupped in both palms. She stared at the glimmer of crimson, and at the bands and patches of blackness that closed it in like the bars of a cage, comparing the object before her eyes with her memories of it from yesterday. Had the stain grown? Had it retreated? By a millimeter, or half a millimeter?

He was alone. She did know how it was possible to sense this, but she could. Loneliness was like a hard block of stone, and despair was like a mass of needles. Darkness, sinuous and icy to the touch, bled into her skin, and fear was a dense cloud that wrapped itself around the heart. So much of it, damp and viscous, refusing to dissipate, until she could no longer tell if she was feeling his fear or her own. All her impulsive bravery had deserted her.

 _"Rumple, you saved Gideon. You saved our son. But...But there's something I must tell you about him. Gideon...Gideon can't see. Don't blame yourself, because you're not to blame. Believe me that you're not to blame. You did save him, you really did. Don't let despair take you. I'm going to bring you home. Come home. Come home and we'll figure this out together. We'll cure him, together. We will be with each other again."_

On Gideon's seventh month birthday, she sat in a beautifully lit, state-of-the-art examination room in Boston, while a renowned specialist struggled to explain to her that in the end, nothing could be explained. They had exhausted their battery of newest and most complex tests, and none revealed a cause for Gideon's blindness. A cause known to medical science, that was, added Belle inwardly as she listened.

A twinge of disappointment snaked though her consciousness, but she was able to suppress it with few deep breaths. Through the entire drive down from Storybrooke, she had been steeling herself for this. After all, the idea that had brought her here—that some physical reason could be found, and that there was something modern medicine could do for Gideon's sight—had never been anything but the remotest of hopes.

On her lap, her son squirmed, stretching an arm up in the direction of the doctor's voice. Reaching into the diaper bag on the next chair, Belle pulled out his little teddy bear and placed it beside his hand. The infant's fingers closed around the familiar toy, and he drew it snugly against himself, babbling a few cheerful indistinct syllables, ready to be content for another while. Looking back up at the physician, she nodded, and even managed a smile of kindness. The man seemed apologetic, visibly troubled by his failure.

"I am aware that this must be very difficult for you, Mrs. Gold," he began. "But at this point, a well-planned course of adaptive therapy would be the best option..."

 _"Rumple, Gideon stood on his own today, grabbing onto the side of the bed. He heard me calling his name, and he turned his head to me, and his smile...His smile was that of an angel. You should have been here to see it. I want you here, to pick him up in your arms, put him to bed every night, wake him up every morning. I want you here so much. You want to be here with Gideon, too, don't you? You can read to him, you know. He's really starting to love it when I read him stories. His whole face just lights up, and he reaches toward the sound of my words, and toward the book as if he can see it is there. I wish you're here, next to me, reading a story for our son. You would like that, wouldn't you, Rumple?_

 _"Every part of me aches for you, Rumple, every day, every instant. It hurts. It hurts so much, but I can't tell anyone. I can't tell people that I am working to bring the Dark One back to their town; they'd do their best—someone would—to stop me. No one would understand, and what would be the point, anyway? I feel so alone sometimes, isolated, and I...I am afraid. I am so afraid. Why won't you tell me where you are? Why won't you answer me?"_

For the most part, people honestly attempted to be friendly. The Dark One was gone, and it was no longer his wife they saw, only the courageous single mother, fighting her way through life, doing everything in her power for her blind child. She did not bring up her estranged husband, and the other residents of Storybrooke took it as a cue. They probably considered it an unambiguous indication of her feelings, Belle reflected.

Occasionally, Gideon went to Granny's for an hour or two of babysitting. Go on, don't fret, the old woman would say, patting her arm with maternal affection, you deserve a break. You deserve every bit of support you can get. Belle would thank her sincerely, and respond affably to the sympathetic greetings from the diner's patrons. She wondered how their nods and waves and genial small talk would change, had they discovered that she actually spent her 'breaks' in the Sorcerer's Mansion on the outskirts of town, going through its secret collection of magical texts. There was always something unsettling to her about that house, a faint aura of restrained power, a tension in the air. It was one place where she never took Gideon.

From time to time, Mary Margaret would step into the library, or stop on the sidewalk to chat briefly. Part of it was meant as olive branches, Belle understood. Despite all the secrets she had begun to keep, she was grateful for the human contact, for the advice and commiseration. The two mothers almost never discussed the past—for this, too, Belle was thankful—especially the fact that Belle's son had once ran a sword through Snow's daughter. Except once on a warm spring afternoon, as they sat on a bench in the park playground watching their sons in the sandbox, Snow laughed at the antics of the two babies, and remarked how good it was that Gideon had been given a second chance.

"He never had a first," Belle said, just a touch more sharply then she meant. There was something familiar about the phrase. Second chance. It was what the Blue Fairy had once said about Gideon.

"Oh, everyone knows how much you did to protect him," Snow replied, blinking, "It's not your fault, of course—"

Belle did not ask whose fault she thought it was.

Even Hook, under Emma's influence or instructions, managed to refrain from mentioning Rumplestiltskin's name in front of her. More or less.

"I'm glad to see you doing better now on your own, Belle," he told her one day.

Belle braced herself, fingers tightening around the bar of Gideon's stroller. Killian was noticeably itching to gloat about his enemy's final and apparently irrevocable disappearance, but then he must have seen her blanch.

"It's hard, I guess," he said, clearly making a serious effort to be sensitive. "I mean, an…emotionally abusive situation like that, for such a long time. I admire you, really. You stood up to him, showed everyone how strong you are. Nobody is completely sure of what happened, but maybe—maybe it was you who drove the old crocodile away. The town's safe from the beast thanks to you."

She could not very well break down or scream at him then and there, so she didn't. It took her hours to recover afterwards, however.

 _"Do you remember me, Rumple? Do you remember you son? Do you remember your grandson? There are still those who care about you. For their sakes, if not for mine, don't give up. I know you haven't, not yet, because you see, I can tell. I can tell from the light of your heart, from the way it beats. I can feel you. I can feel the fear, the pain, the hopelessness. And—and despite everything, you haven't given in yet. I can feel that, too. And if you can still go on, then so can I."_

"You're still trying to find Grandpa, aren't you?"

Behind the circulation desk, Belle went suddenly motionless, staring down at the row of books on the library cart in front of her.

"What do you mean, Henry?" she asked after a few seconds, lifting her head and meeting the other's eyes.

"I saw some of the books you've been studying. Magic to seek for what was lost, methods for getting into other realms." Across the desk, the teenager was scrutinizing her, and he must have seen something. A reassuring grin. "Don't worry. I don't think anyone else noticed."

"Oh," said Belle. She took a quick, almost furtive glimpse about the room. The two of them were alone in the library except for Gideon, who was in his portable playpen along the far wall, next to the children's section. At the sound of their conversation, the one-year-old dropped the carved block he was clutching, letting it fall to the carpet with a soft jingle. He angled his head toward them, a curious expression on his face, and she wondered briefly if he could understand what they were saying.

"Rumple," she said, then some instinct made her stop. Even that name alone must have already revealed far too much. "Well, Henry, I...I've been trying to help Gideon. I'm his mother, and I have to find a way to help him. And Rumple—Rumple may know a way, wherever he is now. Gideon's condition is magical, I am certain of that. And...he is Gideon's father, and if anyone can discover a cure for it, he will."

"And this is the reason you're searching for him?" Henry's gaze remained unwavering. "Only this reason?"

Rapidly, Belle weighed her options, as images of the boy's mothers, stepfather and maternal grandparents flitted across her brain. Since when had she become like this, so cagey and cautious, gauging for hidden dangers in each word and glance? Henry was just a kid. A kid from a family of heroes, a young prince born into the light.

"Rumplestiltskin is the Dark One," she said.

The lad shrugged.

"So?"

"Most people in this town consider his magic a threat they're glad to be rid of."

"People never minded his magic when they needed it save themselves." He shrugged again.

"They believe that I'm doing my best to move on and put my...former delusions behind me, Henry."

"Maybe they believe wrong, then?"

Not knowing how to respond, Belle averted her eyes. Neither of them spoke. Henry stood frowning, seemingly passing through some inward struggle, then he walked around the circulation desk to her side.

"He's my grandpa, you know," he said very quietly.

At the young man's words, Belle's vision smeared with unshed tears. She trembled, once, and found herself being pulled into a firm embrace.

"He...He threw himself into darkness to save Gideon and me. He saved everyone, everyone except himself...Don't you see, Henry? He saved everyone, yet he exiled himself away from me, from his son..."

"Yes, yes, Belle, I do see. I understand," murmured Rumplestiltskin's grandson. His voice, too, was thick with emotions.

"Why is it that no one else sees? Why does no one else understand? Rumple is my husband and I want him home. With me. With our son. He's out there all by himself, I don't even know where, and I am frightened for him, so frightened. He is my husband..."

 _"Rumple, Gideon asked about his papa today. I was reading him a bedtime story, one with other children and their papas in it, and he just piped up in his beautiful little voice. "My papa?" he asked. I told him that his papa will come home to him. To us. I wasn't merely telling a lie to pacify a child."_

"C'mon, step up. Good. Here's another step. There you go. And just one more—oh, good job!"

Gideon beamed at her, proud at having made his way up the flight of nine steps all on his own, exactly the same as any other big boy would. He could not see his mother bent over him protectively, both arms poised in the air beside him, one on each side, ready in case he fell.

"You did a great job, honey. I'm so proud of you..."

Gently taking Gideon's hand in her own, Belle led him across the porch of the big Victorian house. Her son wobbled a few times—it had been only a month since he'd really started walking—but he was gaining confidence. At the front door, he clung to her leg while she dug in her purse for the key. For the space of a shimmering moment, the action felt instinctive, automatic, as if she still did this everyday of her life. She could simply call out to her husband, and hear his footfalls descending the stairs, the echo of his tender greeting.

We're home, Rumple.

The stained glass panes around the front door threw patches of luminous color across the wooden foyer floor. The house had been uninhabited for over a year.

"Mama?"

Belle blinked away the memories. Resolutely, she reminded herself of the reason they were here. The library beneath her apartment had been more than wrung dry for her purposes, and a thorough search of the house, along with the books Rumple used to keep here, was long overdue. A few hours snatched here and there while Gideon stayed with babysitters would not be nearly enough.

"This is...Papa's house, just like we talked about." She squatted down and laid a hand against his shoulder. "Would you like to stay here for a few days, sweetie?"

With an enthusiastic nod, Gideon went a pace forward, then halted, tentative. Belle stood up and walked into the house with him, keeping a light contact upon his arm as he began to explore cautiously. Unlike other toddlers, he would not be running or scrambling across the room. For the hundredth time, Belle mentally went over the layout of the house. For his age and condition, Gideon was fast developing an ability to navigate his environment that astonished his therapists, but she refused to take any chances. She would have to move some of the furniture, pad the corners in the hallway, put up gates beneath the stairs.

When was the first time she had planned to childproof this house? The balmy and naive days of another lifetime. A week after her wedding, to be precise. Back then, she had told Rumple of her dreams, and he had kissed her, and promised that they would do it together. He broke his promise.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Never like this.

 _"Rumple, I found something today. Something of yours. It must have been from ages past, from the Enchanted Forest. I don't know if you even recall it, or ever noticed its presence here in your own house; the curse that created Storybrooke must have deposited it in this world. But at some point, before I met you, you must have designed the device to aid your search for Baelfire, one of the side paths you attempted and abandoned while you were working on finding your way to this world._

 _"You were brilliant, though, Rumple. You realize that, don't you? What you created will be put to use after all these years. When I saw it, when I started to comprehend, it was like a spark bursting into flames inside me again. I don't yet know how to make it work, I don't yet know how to comb through a hundred thousand worlds, but I will."_

A layer of dust danced into the attic air when she lifted the cardboard box lid. At first sight, it appeared to contain nothing but a mess of rusted metal and shriveled brownish vines, bet by now, she was adept enough at recognizing the scent of magic, even magic that had been dormant for centuries.

She carried the box downstairs, and made sure Gideon was safely asleep in another room. Only then did she begin to remove the components of the half-constructed contraption from the box. What she had taken for dried-out vine and twigs, on closer examination, turned out to be some strange medieval version of wires, no doubt enchanted. Several strands had twined themselves around the rim of a plain round mirror, its surface still fresh and shiny. Atop the mirror rested several velvet pouches, each tied with a length of familiar golden thread. Most of them were filled with powders of various hues, none of which she could identify, but one contained only a small glass or crystal ball, no larger than a toy marble. Carefully, Belle pulled it out of its nest of ancient fabric and held it up to eye level.

As a beam of sunlight from the window caught on the bright crystal, something winked. Belle let out a gasp, barely preventing herself from dropping the thing. She fixed her gaze on the little orb, but it was already perfectly transparent and featureless again. With a grimace, she placed it back into the pouch, and peered once more into the cardboard box. Three or four pieces of yellowed parchment lay neatly folded at the very bottom. Belle went over to the kitchen, washed and dried her hands, and found a new pair of latex gloves. The sheets were brittle, crumbling at the edges; it took her some time to move them to the dining table and spread them out.

A set of meticulously drawn diagrams opened before her, the ink fading yet still readable, wreathed in tangle of fine arrows, each labeled with a phrase or symbol. Around the pictures, the margins were brimming with scribbled notes, some of the lines crossed out, some underscored. She recognized the handwriting instantly.

Belle drew closer and read the first sentence of Rumplestiltskin's annotations. Rising from her chair, she paced back and forth a few rounds to collect her thoughts, then went to retrieve her own notebook before going back to the table. She began to read in earnest.

 _"Once a long time ago, Rumple, I believed I was braver than you. I believed all it took was willpower, that all I had to do was squeeze my eyes shut, and my faith and my courage alone would drive away all the darkness, all the dangers, and melt them into nothing. I had faith in my own goodness, in the ideal of heroism, faith that light would triumph over darkness. But the light was far away, too pure to be grasped by mere human beings. It wasn't enough._

 _"So now I am the one to ask for faith—faith in you. And I am asking you for courage. Give me courage, Rumple, wherever you are. Give me courage to keep my wits about me, and my eyes open."_

"An Eye of Argus." Regina's eyebrows flew up in surprise. "Wow. I had no idea that any of them actually still existed."

"Yeah." Belle nodded. "According to every record I've found so far, all the Eyes known to history were destroyed or lost centuries ago."

The other woman threw her a questioning look.

"And you managed to get your hands on this?"

Tensing perceptibly, Belle glanced aside at Henry, who sat on the sofa beside her, but he merely grinned back, unperturbed. Against her better judgment, the lad had dragged her to the mayor's house, citing his mother's unparalleled expertise in numerous types of spying magic. Lacking a better—or any other—option, Belle had agreed, but now she could no longer quell the second thoughts gnawing within her.

"Rumple managed to get his hands on this, as it happened," After an instant of inner debate, she replied in a somewhat nonchalant tone. Regina would have deduced that he had something to do with it anyway. Luckily, the other appeared to accept the vague answer.

"It's not working for you, though," she stated matter-of-factly, returning her attention to the tiny crystal sphere on the coffee table between them.

"You know, Mom?" asked Henry, cutting in before Belle could decide on how to answer. "It's only showing some gray stuff, swirls. Like cottony fabric, or rain clouds."

"I guessed," said Regina. Then, addressing Belle once more "Do you have an idea why?"

Belle hesitated.

"An Eyes of Argus is a powerful object, able to perceive everything around itself, both sights and sounds, just as if a human observer is standing in its physical location," she recited slowly, words that she had copied from musty and discolored book pages a few days ago. "Reputed to be a thousand in original number, they are connected naturally to a central, or main Eye, which remains in the possession of the gods, by all accounts. An Eye of Argus will see nothing except what is before the main Eye, unless specifically 'opened' or freed by an expert, through a particular magical spell. This procedure must be accomplished before an Eye can be put to use."

"And you're the greatest expert on this, Mom." Henry leaned forward. "Everybody knows—"

"Don't play your flattery on me, kid," interrupted his mother, but the corner of her lips twitched upward. She picked up the Eye of Argus from the coffee table, and rotated it pensively between thumb and forefinger.

"What do you intend to use this for?" she asked casually.

"I'm looking for..." Belle's answer trailed off. The next thing that came out was not what she intended. "I'm looking for a cure for Gideon's vision."

"Ah." Regina inclined her head, still peering down at the Eye. "An ingredient for the cure?"

"Well," said Belle, instincts battling each other inside. "Actually..."

"An ingredient that Rumple would know about, if he were here?"

"C'mon, Mom," began her son.

"And you trust me to help you?" Regina ignored the boy's cajoling. "You trust me enough to show this to me?"

Startled, Belle was unable to find an easy reply. Abruptly, memories reared, crashing against her consciousness. A claustrophobic stony cell, no windows. Another cell, white with nothing in it but a narrow steel bed. An emptiness inside her chest.

"I trust you, Mom."

Henry's voice was not loud, but it rang and reverberated inside the high-ceilinged room. There was no space for uncertainty in any of the syllables. For a few seconds, none of them spoke.

"I need you to help me," said Belle. "And I suppose it's only reasonable that you ask for an explanation. Rumple—"

"Wait, Belle." The other held up a hand. For the first time, she met the younger woman's gaze directly. Weariness dragged at the edges of her eyes and mouth, though her expression was unreadable. Another silence.

"You are searching for an ingredient to cure Gideon's eyes," said Regina finally. It was obvious that she was choosing each word with deliberation. "This is something I can understand, as a mother myself. There is no need for you to explain more, as it is not my business to learn more beyond this. Nor is it the business of anyone else in this town, of course."

"Oh," breathed Belle, flooded with relief. "Thank you—"

"And I admit that I owe you. For...a number of things in the past," continued the former queen, still outwardly dispassionate. "Now, the spell to free an Eye of Argus is a rather tricky one, and not irreversible. Several components are necessary..."

 _"Rumple, desperation is drowning me, yet it also keeps me going. Was this what it was like for you, when you were searching for Bae? Did you feel like this for three hundred years?"_

"You've been pushing yourself too hard, Belle."

With a start, she tore her focus away from the mirror. Henry stood on the other side of her kitchen table, calm and watchful. It was almost incongruous, a seventeen-year-old boy as the embodiment of reason. But the Savior's son was not like most teenagers.

"It's almost there," she muttered. "I have to do this."

Henry leaned over, inspecting the mirror before them in fascination. The 'wires' had been attached painstakingly according to Rumple's diagrams, but the silvery surface—the machine's viewing screen, in modern parlance—still reflected nothing but their own faces. A short pang of guilt jabbed at Belle's mind: she never wished to see Henry keeping secrets from his own family for her sake. Nevertheless, over the last months, the young man had been insistent, and she had found herself with a confidant and co-conspirator.

"What's this here?" He pointed to one edge of the now-assembled apparatus. Drab branches and rough multi-colored metal twisted around each other, converging to a nexus, bristling with miniature thorns and hooks.

"It's a carrier for a locator spell, I think. It operates together with the Eye of Argus, and the rest of the device is constructed to push it and the Eye into partial existence in other realms." Belle paused, hunting for a precise description. It had taken her almost three weeks to figure out this part of her husband's invention, and she could not but be awed by his remarkable ingenuity. "The magic for the spell was already cast, and the only thing left is to trigger it. As far as I can tell, at least. Rumple's notes on this part of his design are incomplete. He must have been unable to overcome the last obstacle."

"The Eye of Argus couldn't be made to work in the Land without Magic no matter what," mused Henry, thinking out aloud. "And it was supposed to be the camera for the whole setup, so to speak. Yeah, you told me, Belle. It must have been why Grandpa never finished building the device."

"This won't be a problem for what we're doing, though."

"How are you so sure?"

Belle did not reply immediately.

"I am sure," she said at last. "Wherever Rumple is, it is a magical realm."

The lad nodded. He did not press the point.

"What are you going to use?"

The question was unspecific, but Belle understood it right away. She crossed the living room to her desk, unlocked the drawer, pulled it open, and wrapped her fingers around something small and bright that lay inside. Shutting the drawer again, she returned to the kitchen table.

"This," she said. "For the locator spell. It belonged to your grandfather."

Henry stared down at the ring, its single stone pale and luminous against her outspread palm. After a while, he let out a long breath.

"There's another difficulty, though, even if you get this thing up and running," he said. "You can't sit there staring at this mirror the whole time, not with Gideon and everything else. It'll take you forever."

"I'll do my best." Belle bit her lips. She had considered the point Henry just raised, more than once. "There is nothing else I've got."

"I have an idea, actually." The lad quirked his eyebrows at her. "It's why I came over to see you today..."

Bending down, he rooted around a backpack on the floor at his feet, and hauled out a slim laptop computer.

"To be honest, it's a bit crazy, but I figured it's worth a shot. I've been getting pretty good at computers, you know, and I've always wondered if magic can be connected up to modern technology..."

 _"Rumple, you entrusted your most priceless possession to my keeping. I watch it each day, and I see the blackness that flows and ebbs, locking you inside itself, attacking without respite, yet your heart still beats. It's still you. You are still you. You still remain yourself. There is still a light there, imprisoned, in chains, yet it is still red, the color of human blood, and it is still fighting."_

The apartment living room was cluttered with Gideon's toys, trucks and animals made of varied materials, blocks and balls that clattered, chimed, sang. On her desk, a laptop now sat neatly, its hum constant and nearly inaudible, the screen flashing with countless disjointed images in swift succession. Forests, deserts, distant cities. Days and nights and twilights. A casual visitor would not have noticed the single slender cable that ran behind the desk and into an enclosed cabinet underneath. Had anyone tugged open the cabinet door, it would have revealed a thicket of wires, a wedding ring looped through a narrow band of iron, and a strange crystal ball wrapped in circuits of burnished copper. At the center, a round mirror sparkled, lit by no external illumination, its surface a perfect simultaneous counterpart of the computer screen two feet above, whirling with endless visions. Rumplestiltskin's creation had been finally brought to life in Storybrooke, patiently and faithfully scanning through hundreds of enchanted forests and wonderlands.

 _"Rumple, it has been two years, eight months, and nineteen days. You do not come into my dreams. But I remember you. I remember everything, all the happiness, all the pain. If I could go back to the very beginning, to start over...There were so many doubts, so many regrets. Why? Why did we betray each other? Was it the darkness for you? Then what was it for me?"_

Night had already deepened over Storybrooke. In the bedroom, Gideon had been tucked in hours ago. Outside the window, a tender moon poured its liquid radiance down onto the hushed towns and villages, onto the nestled hills and snow-laden forests of the Maine countryside, and onto the Atlantic's gleaming waves beyond the shore. Belle sat alone, just the same as on a thousand nights past, with only the silent rhythm of her husband's heart and her own quiet words for company.

 _"Rumple, I've been thinking. All this time, all these days and nights and months and years, I have thought and thought. I thought, once, that I had strength for both of us, and that it would be enough. I thought I was wise enough to know what to do, for both of us. I thought I could be magnanimous to you. I thought I could redeem you. But now...Now I am in no position to offer you strength, wisdom, magnanimity, redemption. Maybe I never was. All I can offer you is love. I love you, Rumplestiltskin. I love you so much that all else is burning away. I love you. Even if my heart falls to ashes, I would still love you."_

A tear fell onto the heart in her hands, then another. The glistening drops slid across a tightly wound knot of darkness, and melted into the pulsing red glow.

"Mama?"

Framed in the shadowy bedroom doorway, her toddler son stood in his pajamas, one tiny hand against the wall. He guided himself forward a step, then paused, outwardly perfect brown eyes directed straight toward her.

"Had a dream, Mama..." he murmured, voice still half-slurred with sleep.

Laying Rumplestiltskin's heart down onto the desk, Belle quickly rose, and crossed the living room to lift her son into her arms.

"Sweetie, Mama's here," she cooed, lightly rubbing his back. "Mama's right here. Everything's all right..."

Gideon snuggled a tousled head against her shoulder. But as Belle began to carry him back toward the bedroom, he raised an arm to point past her shoulder, toward the desk.

"Papa's heart," he said.

In the middle of the room, Belle froze in her tracks. It was several seconds before she decided that she had heard Gideon correctly. The two words he'd just uttered had been perfectly clear.

"Sweetie?"

"Papa's heart," repeated the child, this time a bit more loudly.

For a long moment, Belle remained where she stood, not quite able to wrap her brain around the implications of what she had just heard. Then she noticed that her own heart had begun to hammer madly against her ribcage. Steady, steady, don't startle Gideon. She turned and walked back to her desk, picked up Rumplestiltskin's heart with one hand, and held it in front of her son's face.

"Gideon, honey," she said. With some difficulty, she kept her tone even and low. "Do you...Do you see this? What I mean is—" It occurred to her that he might not connect the word 'see' with whatever he were sensing. "Is there anything in front of you? Anything different?"

The toddler's mouth curled into a happy grin. He reached forward, and a delicate finger brushed against his father's heart.

"Red," he pronounced with confidence.

.

* * *

Notes: The magical device that Belle finds was designed (but never fully completed) by Rumple back in the Enchanted Forest. It is meant to allow the user to look into other worlds (as long as magic operates in those worlds) and search for a specific person or object, by combining the Eye of Argus with a powerful locator spell and magical components to facilitate realm-crossing.

Belle is sure that Rumple is in a magical realm because of the dream/vision she had at the end of Chapter 8. However, also because of the vision, she has in fact ruled out the Dark Realm in her mind. As shown in the last chapter, Rumple has only heard fragments of Belle's words to his heart (given in italics here).

Belle will find Rumple soon. I promise. It will also be explained why Gideon can see his father's heart (and what else he can see).

As always, I am very thankful to Ethereal_Wishes for beta-reading.


	11. Dream

.

 **Dream**

.

.

"Papa?"

With a start, Rumplestiltskin stumbled to his feet. Almost instantly, his knees buckled, and he barely managed to grab onto the rough pillar of the archway for support. Gradually, by the dim glow of ghost flames in the distance, he began to make out a small, pale face, framed in a messy mop of brown hair, and a pair of wide innocent eyes fixed upon him. The child stood a mere yard away, barefooted and clad in blue pajamas printed with chubby dinosaurs, yet he did not appear to have noticed how cold the air was, nor the tortured skeleton of the city that lay outspread to every direction. He was no more than two or three years old.

"You..." Rumplestiltskin's chest constricted, and all breath fled. "You're..."

"Papa." The toddler smiled beatifically. "You hear me."

"Gideon?" The name emerging with agonizing slowness. Yes, Gideon. Gideon. Belle. A quiet beautiful voice that he'd only invented out of his imagination. Floating fragments of long lost treasures. Storybrooke. His family. His son. His wife.

"You hear me," repeated the little boy, emphatic with enthusiasm.

With a screech, Rumplestiltskin's brain switched on with a hundred horrifying possibilities. The night convulsed, deep, boundless, alive with monstrous things. Memories flashed, Gideon's past life, his own past life, visions of the dead and no one but the dead. This realm. The Dark Realm.

"Gideon." He glanced around themselves with swift furtiveness. No ghosts or demons as of yet. "You can't. You are...Why are you here? Are you here?"

His son stared back as if it was the most idiotic of questions. Maybe it was.

"Yeah. I come here a bunch of times. I like here. It's, um, pretty. Not like at home."

Pretty. The incongruity of the adjective knocked Rumplestiltskin off balance. Desperately, he snatched at a few other words in his son's reply. _A bunch of times. Home._

"Where...is your home?"

"Storybrooke. Maine." Gideon did not hesitate, but pronounced the syllables fluently and distinctly, the way he must have been taught to do. But then his eyes seemed to catch upon something in the shadows between them. Something invisible.

"Butterfly?" he asked abruptly.

"What?"

"And those are flowers, Papa?"

Rumplestiltskin spun around, and saw the same perpetual gloom, the same charred and torn walls and columns. Nothing else stirred.

"Wait." He turned back, and lifted a hand to his forehead to push back the wild swirl of thoughts and—and he didn't know what else. Grayish scales covered his own skin, and black talons protruded in place of fingernails. He'd forgotten what he was in this world.

"Gideon, I..." he tried again. After a moment of thought, he lowered himself to a kneeling position, so that he no longer loomed over the boy. His bones creaked. "I am your father, yes. I am your papa...But how did you get here? How did you come to this place?"

Gideon blinked, snapping out of the distraction. His glance returned to Rumplestiltskin's face, and there was no reflection of the monster in his guileless eyes.

"I go to bed." The reply sounded like it should have been obvious.

"You are dreaming." Miraculously, the churning vertigo retreated a bit. "You're dreaming of this realm?"

"Er, I guess." Gideon looked taken aback, as if the idea had not occurred to him before. "And you're here, Papa. You were here before, too. But you didn't hear me." The child's grin wobbled. "You didn't before. I said papa, lots of time. I shouted papa, and you didn't hear."

His heart was a world away, bur Rumplestiltskin felt its tremors. In the hollow space where it used to be, something expanded, brimming over, warm, hot, scalding.

"I hear you now, Gideon. I see you, my boy."

Two things happened next, almost simultaneously. The first was Gideon leaping forward and slamming into him with all the force that such a tiny body could muster. The toddler's arms clamped onto him in a ferocious embrace.

A fraction of a second later, a conflagration of light exploded against Rumplestiltskin's eyelids.

A hundred white blades pierced him, though his eyes had squeezed shut instinctively. Sound invaded his ears, a continuous riot of trilling and warbling. It was familiar, as familiar as the terrifyng, brilliant pain. An all-consuming rhythmic drumming, somewhere, everywhere, against the skin of his chest. Heartbeat. Not his own. Gideon's. The child's pulse was so, so much more powerful than he could ever have imagined.

Birdsong. Finally, he recalled it, the noise washing over him, swirling, rapturous, and the recognition made him quiver like a leaf upon the storm. To every direction, birds were pouring out their souls in endless waves of song.

"Papa, I'm so happy..."

Very slowly, fearful of what he would find, Rumplestiltskin opened his eyes. It took an eternity or maybe it took only few seconds, but eventually, his vision started to adjust to the rush of brightness.

The world, the Dark Realm, had come alive.

At first, all he saw was green. Incandescent, vehement green. Tall trees rose before him, behind him, their great trunks straight and proud, arms outspread, heads lifted high above the barely visible ruins. Dappled light sprinkled down among their foliage, a million emeralds tossed haphazardly at his feet. Long fragrant grass covered the ground, eddying like verdant pools, flowing out across the city, ripping up the ancient pavement, obliterating it with asters and daisies. The pillars and arches lining the path no longer stood naked in torment, but were clothed in wild roses and trailing, unbridled vines. In the distance, the canals glimmered with jade-hued water. Not a trace of fire and bones remained.

"What...What is happening?"

"What's happening, Papa?" Gideon seemed confused by his father's confusion. With some reluctance, he pulled out of the hug, half a step back. Sunlight danced across his face and within his eyes.

"This world." Rumplestiltskin glanced down, and saw his own human form for the first time in ages, gaunt and broken, clad in shapeless rags. The skin of his hand was covered with grime and dotted with nicks and cuts, yet Gideon's small palm remained firmly pressed against it.

"It's all changed...It's you. Something in you made everything different. Your light..."

"This is light," beamed Gideon. "I know this."

The answer did not make any sense whatsoever, but Rumplestiltskin's mind, already aflame, managed to snag onto something in the other's intonation. He inhaled, exhaled, and wrapped his fingers around his son's hand.

"Is this what you see here, son? I mean...every time, in your dreams?" he heard himself ask. "Light? Sunlight? And the sky?"

"Um. Yeah." Of course. His question must have come across as utterly ridiculous. "And I see you, Papa, all the time. Not always here, though. Other places. 'Cause sometimes I'm in other places, too. Sometimes you're under trees, bigger trees. Sometimes by the water. But you never saw me, Papa. Not before."

"You see grass, and trees? Flowers?"

"Flowers?" Gideon's eyes lit up, as if with some flash of realization. "These are flowers, right?"

A needle of ice pricked somewhere inside Rumplestiltskin's brain.

"Yes...Flowers."

"Red?" Gideon pointed to a patch of daisies at their feet.

"No. Um, these are yellow," he replied after a pause, automatically.

Gideon pouted.

"Books say flowers are red," he insisted. "Those are red?"

Again, it was a few seconds before Rumplestiltskin figured out what his son was talking about.

"Those...Those are wild violets. They're blue."

"Blue." Gideon pronounced the color as if attempting to commit it to memory. He raised his face upward. "Like sky is blue?"

"Yes."

"And those? Are they red?" Gideon swiveled, tugging at him. Rumplestiltskin turned as Gideon did, gaze following his son's along the soft rivulets of grass. To one side of them, a fiery cascade of roses had draped itself over the remnants of an old wall, splashing its leaves and thorns and ardent flowers across the ancient masonry in vigorous tangles. Bees and butterflies fluttered.

"Yes. Those flowers are red."

"I know it!" Gideon all but shouted in excitement. "Red!"

At long last, the bits and pieces of rationality left inside Rumplestiltskin ground into sluggish life, triggered by the strangeness of the child's remarks. Would a toddler this young have known his colors? He could not recall what it had been like when Bae had been this age. Yet Gideon sounded perfectly familiar with the words. He merely had trouble matching them with what lay before his eyes, it appeared. Almost as if...As if he'd learned the names of the colors only in the abstract.

"My son." He attempted to meet the child's eyes levelly. "You come here in your dreams, and you see all this? And you've seen me here, among the trees and the grass and under the sunlight? Is that what you are telling me?"

"Uh-huh."

"But you don't know what these are? The flowers? Butterflies? Colors?"

"I wasn't sure. But I know grass." Gideon's tone was just a touch miffed. Bending down, he patted the lush turf with his free hand. "Grass is green. So I know green. And trees. I know trees. And birds."

"Birds?"

"Yeah. Birds sing." His son gave a precocious little shrug. "They sing at home, too. That's how I know they're birds."

"Ah." Rumplestiltskin took a moment to digest the information. There was something unsaid in Gideon's answer, something only an inch or two beyond his reach. Although the day was balmy, he shivered. "And how do you know this is grass? And the trees?"

The toddler's brows furrowed in serious consideration.

"I touch grass and trees at home," he said. "Mama says it helps me. I come here and I touch grass and trees. They feel same, so I know what they are."

Rumplestiltskin froze.

"Your mother said it would help you..." His throat went dry, and he had trouble continuing. "You don't—at home—"

This time, his child said nothing. A sudden mist flickered across bright brown eyes.

"My boy." Somehow, his voice stayed calm. He was as gentle as he never had the chance to be. "Can you tell me something, please? Tell Papa, what do you see when you're at home?"

Gideon did not answer in words. He merely raised an arm, pointing toward the sky above. Rumplestiltskin, too, looked up, following where the small hand indicated. Straight into the blazing white wheel of the sun.

"It's always like that," said Gideon. "But bigger. Everywhere."

After a very long while—or maybe it was only half a second—Rumplestiltskin lowered his gaze. Beyond the burnished afterimages swirling across his retinas, his son's face swam back into focus. The boy was biting his lips. There was something of his mother's bravery in that expression.

"Gideon. Oh Gideon. You're—you're..."

"Blind." The word was matter-of-fact, and not one that a toddler was supposed to understand. "Mama doesn't like when someone says it. But I heard people. I know."

All responses faded into ashes inside Rumplestiltskin's mouth, so the only thing he could do was to draw his son tightly into his arms. He held on. He was going to hold on forever.

"I'm sorry, Gideon. I'm so sorry, my sweet boy..."

He wanted to keep from trembling, from crying out, from shattering into a thousand pieces. He tried, and couldn't.

"Why are you sad, Papa?"

The question, quiet but clear, sounded right next to his ear. When he was able to see through the shimmering film of tears, he found that his son was again regarding him with a quizzical smile.

"I didn't know, Gideon." Sitting on the ground, he struggled to come up with a way to explain. "I'm sorry that I didn't know this would happen to you. I was going to save you."

"Save?"

The entire past was with him now, an overwhelming tide, carrying with it all its darkness, all its complexity. He had no idea how he would keep it out of the boy's curious gaze.

"You see, son, there were...bad things in the world," he began. "And someone who wanted to hurt you. I tried to drive her away from you. But you still got hurt, even though I tried to protect you..."

Gideon nodded, though Rumplestiltskin could tell he did not fully comprehend.

"You protected me, Papa. Like when you pulled me out."

"Pulled you out?"

"Out of the light. Yeah."

"The light?"

"Light was...White?" Once more, Gideon gestured upward toward the midday sun, briefly uncertain. It must have been another color whose name the child had only guessed. "It felt bad. It hurted, like when I was falling down, but more bad. But then you grabbed me and pulled me out. I know it was you, Papa."

Suddenly, Rumplestiltskin was in two places, two times at once. He was in the open air, with the breeze in his face and the incessant music of birds everywhere around him, but he was also underground, back in the mines outside of Storybrooke, kneeling upon the rocky floor, a hundred chains of dark magic pulling at his back, a searing ocean of white fire ripping into him from the hollow space between his hands. A whimpering cry somewhere, frightened and helpless. He dove into the light.

"You were only a newborn baby," he muttered. "But you remember? How?"

Gideon only stared at him, evidently at a loss.

"And—" Another thought fell upon him. "You know I'm you papa. How did you know? And...when did you start to have these dreams? When did you start to know?"

"I just know." The toddler leaned in against his arm. "I always know. 'Cause you're my papa. I love you."

"Oh, my boy..." He could not find anything else to say. Lightly, he cupped the side of Gideon's face with one hand. The skin of his own palm was too rough and torn against the delicate touch of the child's cheek. "My poor, sweet boy. I love you, too. I wanted you to have a happy life..."

"But I want—" Gideon swallowed. "I want my papa."

How was he possibly supposed to answer this?

"You always have me, Gideon...Even if I'm far away from you."

"But I want Papa to come home." The child grew insistent. "Mama says you're going to come home."

A silence.

"Your mother said that?" asked Rumplestiltskin at last.

"Lots of times."

"She...wants me to come home? To Storybrooke?"

"Mama says it all the time. I heard her, because I woke up and came out, but she didn't know I was there. She keeps on saying to your heart, come home. Then she gets really sad."

"My heart?" asked Rumplestiltskin. The phantom of a soft feminine voice echoed inside his ears, words that he had never dared to believe as anything but hallucinations.

"Papa's heart," affirmed Gideon. "I heard Mama say it, too, that's how I know what it is. And it's—" He brightened. "Red. Papa's heart is red. Just like those flowers."

"You can tell my heart is red." The implications were already too many, too difficult to process, and fast growing more so with each new revelation. "You saw it?"

Another confident nod.

"Have you ever seen anything else? At home?"

Gideon paused, frowning.

"Just Papa's heart."

"And my heart is—" He cast his sight about, seeking, and finally gestured toward a small patch of exposed rocks a few yards away, smooth and coal-black. "Does the heart look like that?"

The child shook his head.

"Red," he stated one more time, proud of his newfound certainty.

Rumplestiltskin held his breath. Once again, the tendril of something brushed against his brain, something not yet even a thought, but he could not quite grasp it. Something important.

"See the water with me, Papa?" Gideon's voice broke through the haze.

"Water?"

"Yeah. I touched it, too, so I know it's water." The toddler's face radiated joy. "Water's my favorite."

Laying one hand flat against the ground, Rumplestiltskin pushed himself up to his feet rather unsteadily. His other hand still clutched Gideon's; he was terrified of letting go. The child pulled him forward, reveling in the moment. His father followed, half-dazed and on numb legs. As they walked along the across the empty city, along a path once paved with smooth bricks and now paved with verdure, Gideon gestured left and right with his other hand, querying for the names of everything before them.

"Those trees are oaks, yes. They're very old...And this is ivy hanging from the branches..." To Rumplestiltskin, his own answers sounded as if they were coming from someone else entirely, all the way from beyond the horizon. "The birds flying across, Gideon? They're swallows. And those are nightingales in the trees..."

"Those?" A little arm shot out, aiming toward a gap in the forest.

"Those big, big things, really far away? Those are mountains. And the whiteness on top of them is snow..."

"And this is river, right?"

They stopped.

"River, yeah." Tall rushes lined the sloping ground; dragonflies hummed and wove among them. "A canal, actually."

"And those flowers in the—canal?"

"They're water lilies."

Each instant was a shimmering pearl. Try as he did, he could not keep any of them from slipping away through his fingers, not even a single one. Yet he wasn't supposed to be doing this, not here, not in a world that should have been dark and hideous. _But at home_ , murmured the mirages seductively. He could have been doing this at home, in a park, in the Maine forest, in his own backyard, hand-in-hand with his son on the grass, telling him the names of all the trees and flowers.

No. Not even at home. Gideon, for all his obviously extraordinary intelligence, should never have to surmise the names of all things in the world on his own. He should never have needed to be so overjoyed by a mere vision of green.

"And that?" asked the toddler, with a wave toward the distance.

"Well, that, that is a statue. Was a statue."

The marble woman's torso rose from its pedestal, headless and with only one arm remaining, garlanded with flowing vines. How beautiful had she once been, how admired? How long had she stood there, a lonely corpse among grim shadows?

"Papa, why nobody else is here?"

"I don't know, son."

"There should be people here," announced the child. "I think there are people here."

A slight turn in the way Gideon spoke gave Rumplestiltskin pause.

"What do you mean?"

"It's like...People are here and not here," said Gideon slowly. "It's like I feel they're—" he concentrated for the next word, "— _almost_ here. Kids and animals and grown-ups, too. They laugh and cry, but not really."

He halted for a while, searching for descriptions that are obviously far too complicated.

"They want to be here," he continued finally. "People and things. But they aren't. So they beat on the doors. It hurts them. It makes them sad."

"You mean...Like ghosts?"

"Ghosts?" Gideon blinked, apparently unaware of the concept. Rumplestiltskin turned his hand, glancing around at the peaceful scene about them. Of their own accord, images flickered before his eyes, part illusions, part memories. Undead creatures, demons in the night. Abominations he'd met while wandering the wilderness.

"You must have just dreamed of them," he soothed, not entirely truthfully, but the child had no need to know what the Dark Realm truly was. "This is just a dream of yours, son...Remember?"

"Yeah. I guess." As if on cue, Gideon yawned.

"It's time for you to go back home, my sweet boy. Go home to your mama..."

They sat down together on the soft bank of the canal. Gideon leaned in, resting his head across Rumplestiltskin's lap.

"So you'll come home, Papa?"

How could he possibly say yes? How could he possibly escape this world? How could he possibly return to a life long gone and forgotten, walk up to Belle, face her, meet her eyes? What did it mean, _home?_

"Yes."

"Mmm. Okay." Satisfied that now everything was settled, Gideon wriggled a little, nestling against his father, and yawned again.

"Go back to sleep now, my son..."

It took only a few minutes for Gideon to drop away into a deep slumber, the fingers of his hand still laced with his father's. Rumplestiltskin waited, watching the rhythmic rising and falling of the toddler's chest. Very carefully, he shifted Gideon out of his own lap, laying the child's head gently onto the carpet of grass. For a while longer, he stayed motionless, peering down at his son, at the small fragile body, the slender limbs, the tranquil face.

With infinite reluctance, Rumplestiltskin slipped his own hand out of Gideon's grasp.

The Dark Realm's eternal night came crashing down.

Gideon slept on, blissfully untouched by the blast of chill wind, the harsh bare earth beneath him, the debris and bones choking the canal a few yards away, the utter hopelessness of the world around him. Next to him sat his father, aching with every inch, every fiber of his being to touch the child again, to re-establish the contact, to reach once more into that vast and inexplicable pool of light. But he was once more an inhuman beast, and he shrank back into the shadows.

Eventually, Rumplestiltskin laid down on the rocky ground as well. For a time, he fought to remain conscious, to keep Gideon's form within his sight, but exhaustion crept back up his body inexorably, and his eyes closed.

He slipped out of this dream into another, an indistinct one. In this new dream, his heart was beating inside his own chest, even and strong, and there was someone whispering above him, hushed and as tender as raindrops from heaven. In this dream, he recognized Belle by her voice; he heard and understood each syllable she spoke. In this dream, nothing made him afraid, and everything felt right. In this dream hope rekindled.

He awoke to a touch of moisture—water drops?—on his face, having already forgotten all the things Belle had told him in his sleep. Gideon was gone. The dead city was the same as always, nothing but scorched skeletons. Only monsters grew here.

Except he was no longer under the broken archway, but beside the dried-up canal, where he had ended up with Gideon in the dream—the part of the dream that he still could recall. Something must have happened. Something must have been real.

Another drop of water fell onto the back of his hand.

It was raining in the Dark Realm.

It was hardly more than a drizzle, but rain was coming down in the waking world, the drops true and irrefutable. To his surprise, they were not cold, and they were not hard, but fell quietly, glimmering upon the parched land, smoothing away the scars. They were warm to the touch. The warmth of tears.

Had it ever rained before in this world?

Clambering up onto wavering legs, Rumplestiltskin squinted up toward the sky, and saw only curtains upon curtains of black clouds.

He stood alone in the rain, wondering, lost between reality and illusions. But then, all of a sudden, an unbidden touch of realization gleamed to life, like delicate fingertips caressing the emptiness within. It must have been no more than a fantasy, but for a space of a single shuddering breath, he saw the luminous, verdant day again, the sky and the sun and the rippling waters. And he knew. He knew for certain.

Somewhere far away and unseen, someone was shedding tears over him.

Rumplestiltskin took his bearings. In the darkness, it was difficult to tell, and his mother's tower was invisible beyond the horizon, but he could barely make out the line of mountains past the ranks of fallen walls and towers. He had made his way here across the plain, from the opposite direction of those mountains. That much he remembered.

Was it possible for him to ever get out of this realm? No idea. But he had a child who needed him, a child who needed a cure. That much he also remembered.

Straightening his back, Rumplestiltskin made the best guess he could at the path by which he had arrived. Then he began to walk out of the city.

.

* * *

Notes: The rain falling in the Dark Realm is due to Belle's tears, which dropped onto Rumple's heart toward the end of the previous chapter. The ends of these two chapters happen at the same moment in time. In their shared dream, Rumple sees through Gideon's eyes as long as they are in physical contact.

There will be some explanations about Gideon's strange sight and powers (and why he saw the Dark Realm in such an utterly different way) in the upcoming chapters.


	12. Sight

.

 **Sight**

.

.

"...Red?" echoed Belle.

"Yeah." Gideon's angelic smile widened. "Papa told me."

It was of absolutely no use to stand there gaping at the child, it occurred to Belle. Absurdly, the next thought flitting across her mind was that Gideon was fully awake now, and it was going to take her at least an hour to put him back to sleep. After a while, she sat down again before the desk. Gideon settled into her lap, face and eyes still trained unerringly toward the heart she clutched.

"Gideon, honey." She had no idea how or where to start. Not with so many sounds ringing inside her ears. The beating of the heart in her chest, the beating of the heart in her hand. Her little boy's voice. _Papa._

"You said...Papa told you?"

"Papa showed me." Her son nestled his head against her shoulder, making himself comfortable. "Red flowers."

"Red flowers?"

"Papa showed me flowers; they grow on walls," clarified Gideon patiently. "And everywhere else. He said they're red. And Papa's heart is same, so it's red, too."

There must be some logic in this answer, Belle knew. She simply couldn't find the end of the tangled thread, that was all. She just needed to consider it rationally. Placing the heart onto the desk, she wrapped both arms around her son. Rational.

"Okay, sweetie," she said. "Let's...back up a little. You were with your papa?"

An unambiguous nod.

"I see. When?"

"Just now. Earlier. I was sleeping."

"A dream." At last, an idea half-solidified. "You were dreaming?"

"I guess. But I woke up..."

After a few more rounds of careful questioning, the picture began to emerge slowly, as well as a two-year-old could form it. His descriptions came in bits and pieces, sometimes with the wrong words, but the way they meshed together left no space for doubt: her son could see in his dreams. A beautiful green world, alive with tall grass and wildflowers. Sunlight. Waters.

A man curled upon the grass, or wandering beneath the forest's outspread arms. "My papa. I know," stated Gideon. There was no room for doubt in these two short sentences, either. The certainty of his voice was orders of magnitudes stronger than that of a mere child.

What did he look like now, this man? She was afraid to hear the answer. Gideon took a second to consider.

"Thin," he said.

The adjective was too difficult to process, at least for the moment, so Belle wrapped it up inside her brain and confined it there tightly. Too many things whirled and buzzed; she had to pause once more before continuing.

"Just him," Gideon replied to her next query. "All alone. He's all alone because he can't hear me. Not until this time."

He could not tell her when had been the first time he'd remembered dreaming of his father. Weeks ago, maybe, or months. Counting out such spans of time was still well past the capabilities of a child his age, even one such as Gideon. For all she knew, though he had only recently become aware of these dreams, they could actually have been already happening for much longer.

Since he'd been a newborn, a small inward voice piped up from a fog of memories. For some reason it almost sounded like Rumplestiltskin.

The fog shifted, parting to reveal a starry sky, and a shining tower of pale stone atop a grassy hill. A summery breeze brushed her face as she soared effortlessly above the forest canopy. Her voice reverberated as she shouted her husband's name. It had been a dream of her own, though, the evening she'd returned from Doc's office with horrible news. Yes, she recalled it now, the aching of her knees against her bedroom floor, the leftover sting of tears on her face.

The faint pressure of Gideon's tiny infant hand wrapped around her own finger. It had stayed that way until after she had awoken, the physical contact barely detectable yet definitely, undeniably there. She had wondered, then and later, how was it that she'd been granted the dream or vision. She had wondered at the fierce sense of certainty, of _truth_. She knew Rumple was in that world, hidden under those trees, just the same as Gideon knew the man he saw.

Whose vision had it been, really? Hers, or Gideon's?

Was that even possible?

"Mama?"

In her lap, Gideon squirmed a little, once more mesmerized by the sight of his father's heart. Pensively, Belle stroked his hair, smoothing down the silky mess. It was astonishing to watch him like this, looking—looking!—with such fixed curiosity at the familiar object. On the desk, the heart's crimson glow pulsed rhythmically, struggling as always to force its way out between its prison bars, tinging the lamplight with a faint hue of blood. The band and splotches of blackness threw shadowy patterns against the walls.

"Gideon, honey," she murmured, "you were saying that Papa's heart was like flowers?"

"Un-huh. Like roses. Papa said those flowers were wild roses."

"I see." She attempted to reconcile the words with what lay before her eyes. "What about the black parts?"

"Black?" Her son wrinkled his forehead in an effort to recall. "Oh, right. Ravens are black. They were in trees. Papa showed them to me, too. And others birdies."

"Oh." Again, it was a moment before there was a glimmer of sense in his rambling. "I mean the black parts on Papa's heart."

"What black parts?"

"I mean the…" Belle's voice trailed off. Several ridiculous notions bobbed to the surface of her mind at once, all on their own.

"Tell Mama something, sweetie," she said at last. "Can you see...Is there anything that's not red on Papa's heart right now?"

"Nope."

"So it's—it looks the same all over? It is all red?"

"Er, yeah." Gideon clearly had no idea why on earth she was asking about such an obvious thing.

Another long pause.

"Darkness," muttered Belle. "It's on what you see, yet you don't..."

"What, Mama?"

"Oh, nothing." She thrust down the jumble inside her head. Tightening her arms around her son, she stood up and carried him toward the bedroom door. "It's late. Time for little boys to be in bed…"

As expected, it took a rather large amount of patience and persuasion before Gideon was willing to lay still in his toddler bed. Belle hummed a few lines of lullaby, repeating it over and over, while slowly rubbing his back. Eventually, exhaustion won out, and Gideon's eyes closed.

"Almost forgot," he mumbled, dropping off. "Papa said he's coming home."

After she left the bedroom and closed the door behind her, Belle suddenly found herself fighting for breath. The suppressed excitement burst free, and she paced in circles around the cramped living room, trying her best to push her mind into some semblance or order.

A connection between father and son existed, though she could not yet begin to imagine its precise nature. It must have always existed. Both of them possessed magic, after all. What had happened at the moment of Gideon's return to infancy or second birth or whatever it had been, exactly? She had never figured that one out, either; the only thing she'd known for sure was that Rumple had Gideon's heart in his hands.

That vision of hers, when Gideon had been seven weeks old: understanding was finally beginning to fall upon her. It must have also been an effect of her son's mysterious link to his father. Her physical contact with Gideon must have somehow brought her inside the baby's dreams. And now, as Gideon's mind filled out and reached into new spaces, leaving infancy behind, that connection must be getting stronger.

After an hour or so, Belle sat down on the couch and slumped back against the cushions. Reluctant to disturb Gideon, she decided not to slip back into the bedroom and her own bed. Sleeping would be difficult anyway.

How was it that Gideon saw Rumple's heart as pure red, not a speck of darkness? How was it that he saw the heart at all? He could see in his dreams, too, wherever Rumple was. There was some deduction she was supposed to be making, about Gideon's blindness, about Rumple's location. Except it wasn't quite there, not yet. She could almost sense it, only one tiny link she was missing, one final piece of logic or inspiration, a will-o'-the-wisp. It kept on fluttering away from her outstretched fingertips.

Some time around dawn, Belle finally drifted into a fitful doze. Weaving in and out of consciousness, she could still hear the broken-up ghosts of words and phrases, Gideon's, her own, maybe even Rumple's, from years ago.

 _Papa showed me..._

 _His heart is unstained..._

 _So much light can be blinding._ Curiously, this sentence was in a voice she could not quite identify, though it felt like she should. It was feminine and prim.

 _Darkness,_ she repeated to herself. _It's on what you see..._

Belle's eyes flew open.

"Darkness," she said out aloud. "He sees darkness. He see through darkness."

The surmise felt like madness even to herself, but by breakfast time, she had already formulated a plan to test it, a simple one. In the afternoon, after Gideon's nap, she took him across town to the familiar big Victorian house, upstairs and into the bedroom she had once shared with Rumple. The past assailed her as they stood in the doorway, but Belle repeated her plan silently, again and again, reminding herself to concentrate. Memories weren't what they were here for. There were only a few things she needed to do.

"What you doing, Mama?" asked Gideon, sitting cross-legged among the pillows on the bed, where she had settled him.

"Just wait a little while, honey, okay?" She walked toward the fireplace across the room, counting out the patterns on the ornate wallpaper. There. A foot past the right edge of the mantle, a foot upward. Raising one hand, she traced a finger lightly along the tendril of a printed ivy.

Let me in, Rumple, she wanted to say but didn't.

Her husband's wards shimmered apart, revealing the dark green door of a small safe set into the wall. Belle reached for the knob, pulling up the code mentally. The metal was cold to the touch. She turned the dial, right, left, right again. The lock clicked, a minuscule sound, but enough to catch Gideon's attention.

"Mama, what's that?"

"Well..." She didn't quite know how to answer. 'A fairy wand deeply stained by the darkest magic' just did not come across like the kind of things one said to a two-year-old. There were probably other such artifacts over at the pawnshop, stashed away by Rumple over the years, but she had settled on the remnants of the Black Fairy's wand as being least likely to be immediately dangerous.

"Ooh," exclaimed Gideon as soon as she drew the fragments of the wand out of the safe, instantly putting to rest all doubts about her theory.

Carefully, she carried the three pieces over and laid them onto the bedcover, neatly lined up.

"Pretty sticks," began Gideon.

"Don't touch," said Belle quickly.

On its unerring way toward the 'sticks', Gideon's hand halted obediently in mid-air. He pouted, scrunching up his face with a slight squint.

"Toy?" he asked hopefully.

"Well, no. These aren't toys, sweetie." She heard a faint whine of disappointment. "But right now, Mama needs you help. And Papa does, too."

"Papa?" Gideon perked up.

"Yes, Papa needs your help to get home. Can you help us out?"

"Okay."

"Do you see them, the sticks?"

"Three," offered the toddler, showing off his knowledge of numbers.

"And do you see anything else? Around them?"

A shake of the head this time. Belle suppressed a twinge. Gideon's eyes were fixed in fascination on the fragments on the bed—this must be such a rare thing for him. Seeing.

"Are they black?" she asked the next question quietly, her own gaze upon the wand's shattered form, the wood twisted and a shade deeper than ebony. "You know, like the ravens Papa showed you?"

"No black. They're —" Gideon's brows wrinkled. "Like trees. Outside of trees."

"Like tree...bark?" Belle mulled over the reply for a moment, recalling that the toddler had indeed seen trees in his dream. "Brown?"

"Brown!" confirmed the child, pleased at knowing the word. "And shiny. A little red. And—and flowers and leaves."

"You mean...carved flowers and leaves on the wood?"

"Like tree branches. Papa pointed it to me. Flowers and leaves grow on branches."

"Oh." Briefly, she wondered what new surprises her son's eyes had in store for her. "So...These sticks are like pieces of tree branches? With flowers and leaves growing from them?"

"Like that. But not like that." Both of Gideon's hands fluttered in the air. "The sticks are weird. Weird and pretty. Like flowers and leaves are kinda growing on them and then they aren't. And then everything's shiny, like...like water. Then the sticks are there and aren't there anymore."

"Wait, honey. These pieces of wood are and aren't there? At the same time?"

"Yeah. All together." He squinted harder. "And water there."

"The sticks look like water, too?"

"The sticks aren't water. It's like...water wrapped around, sort of, but not _really_ water." Gideon was obviously pushing his rather advanced verbal skills to the limit. "Like a—like a string! String makes sticks not there. Like...empty."

"A string wrapped around the sticks? A string that's like water, but it's not...actually there?" summarized Belle hesitantly. "And where the string is, you can't see the sticks anymore?"

"Yeah!" Gideon nodded enthusiastically, glad that his mother understood. "String is not real, but sticks are..."

After the fragments of the wand had been returned to the safe and locked up, she took Gideon home with many words of praise, as well as promises of new toys and storybooks. Hours later, when she finally had the chance to seat herself before the desk in her living room again, Belle took her old notebook out of the drawer. On one end of the desk, the laptop computer whirred softly, its screen flickering under the lamplight, currently an endless sequence of dim pine forests beneath an unfamiliar configuration of constellations. Belle spared it only a passing glance.

The pages of the notebooks were well-worn by now, ripped here and there around the edges. Only two or three empty sheets were left at the end. Flipping it open to one of them, Belle stared down at the blank expanse for a minute or two, then leaned over and wrote a few lines across the top.

 _-Gideon: connection with his father. Since when?_  
 _-growing with his mind? Is it getting stronger?_

 _-his sight:_

 _1\. Rumple's heart pure red_  
 _2\. Black Fairy's wand: warm brown wood, not black, "almost" with leaves and flowers._  
 _From the tree the wood came from?_  
 _3\. In his dream: sunny beautiful world. Rumple human_  
 _(probably, from answers, Gideon has no way to compare)_

The words were so close to being nonsensical. Belle paused, biting her lower lip pensively. She had only two objects upon which to test Gideon's inexplicable sight, yet so far, both appeared to point to the same conclusion.

 _-he sees objects tainted with darkness, but without the effect of darkness._  
 _-as the way these things should be? Instead of as they actually are_  
 _-HOW?_

How? A question she could not even begin to wrap her mind around. Forcing herself to put it aside for the moment, Belle peered down at the page, a finger tapping at the edge of the table absently. There was something else there, a reply of Gideon's that had been bothering her. The string of 'water' wrapped around the pieces of the wand, seemingly making it waver in and out of existence, or at least in and out of Gideon's vision. The mental image was nearly inconceivable, certain far beyond a toddler's ability to describe, yet if she were to guess wildly...

After a minute or so, she scribbled a few more words next to the line of notes about the Black Fairy's wand.

 _-an overlay of other magic, not part of the wand itself? Light magic?_

 _-another magic user may be able to see it?_

Was there anyone in town who could help her with this? Emma was powerful, but Belle had no idea if the Savior possessed the knowledge of lore necessary for this sort of delicate detection. The Blue Fairy? No. She had already lied to Blue about the wand. Regina? The mayor would have the expertise, and had already help her once with the Eye of Argus. That time, Belle thought she had sensed something in Regina's demeanor, suggesting that the former queen had guessed a part of her secret goal, yet had wanted to remain discreet. And yet...

And yet.

It was an issue she would have to decide on later. Right now, however, there was another idea that required her full concentration. After over two and half years, the first solid clue to Rumple's location was finally within her grasp. A clue she feared to face.

All right. Suppose Gideon was able to see things—and entire worlds, a big assumption, of course—deeply steeped in dark magic, yet see them differently from what they truly were. Differently from what anyone else would have seen. This meant—this meant the place in his dream, where he'd met Rumple, was also not actually what it had looked like to the child. Nothing like it. And the vision she'd had back when Gideon had been a newborn, with its forests, its tower beneath the stars? If those images had indeed come to her through her son's eyes, then they must have misled her completely.

Belle's hand flew to her mouth as her insides abruptly turned to ice. Far too belatedly, the reality of her husband's plight rushed at her in heaving waves, and she sat there, battling down the nausea and swallowing back the tears. Memories of Gideon's innocent little voice floated up, telling her about his father, whom he'd seen in a landscape filled with birdsong and green leaves, with sunlight, with life. Except—except none of those things had been there at all.

She had been a fool. Rumple had been a fool. This must be what he had meant in his final letter to her. Escape. Banished. Unlikely event.

By all the gods, he must have known all along.

After she had steadied herself somewhat, Belle picked up her pen once more. Very slowly, she put down two more words at the bottom of the page. The tip of the pen tore a small gash in the paper.

 _DARK REALM_

The morning brought a measure of calm, and a renewed sense of purpose and urgency. This was progress, she reminded herself firmly. For the first time, she wan't blundering hopelessly through an infinite maze of worlds. The Dark Realm was an enigmatic place, hardly known to even the most learned sorcerers, almost never referred to in texts, its very name sufficient to chill the heart. But it was one realm. Now all she had to do was figure out how to get there.

It was amazing what the combination of fear and hope could push a mind to do, Belle discovered. Somehow, somewhere out of the vast blur of crumbling books and crossed-out notes, out of all the red herrings, all the dead ends she'd slammed against these past two and half years, she dredge up a vague sliver of memory, that of a line or two of text upon a yellowed page. _Blackest magical energy. A realm of horrors._ A few other phrases she could not recall. Had it been a year ago? Two years?

If she focused harder, she could remember something else. At the time, she had shut the small book and shoved it impatiently back onto the shelf, convinced—with a inward sigh of relief, now sickeningly ironic—that whatever place Rumple had left her for, at least it was a world that possessed green forests and gentle night breezes. She could kick herself now. If she had but realized—

Focus. Focus. Where had that been? Bookshelves. Wooden. Not the plain gray metal of the town library downstairs. What kind of wood? Carved. Heavy and dark. Not the rich reddish mahogany of Rumple's study.

The Sorcerer's Mansion. It was the other place where her fruitless research of the past few years had led her.

Very well. She would simply have to find the manuscript in that house again.

Easier said than done, as it turned out. For the next two weeks, whatever moments she could spare away from Gideon, Belle spent at the Mansion, combing through its massive library and its labyrinth of rooms and halls. Henry came over daily to aid in her search, or babysat Gideon when she was unable to make arrangements with Granny or Snow. When Belle expressed concern over what the mayor would say about her son's frequent absences, he merely shrugged, and told her that Regina would not even find out.

"Mom's out of town. Wouldn't tell me what for," he said with a nearly imperceptible frown. "Picking up after Aunt Zelena's messes again, probably."

Even with the young man's help, however, time slipped away inexorably. Every book, every piece of paper in the Mansion, none of them the one she sought, was another minute lost. Another minute of her husband imprisoned in hell. In that strange house, the walls vibrated constantly with barely-restrained magic. Each time she made her way there, the accumulation of furniture and knick-knacks had subtly rearranged themselves, as had the books on the shelves. She went in circles, meeting the same useless volumes over and over again. Each day brought failures and frustration, until she had to clench her fists to keep from screaming in rage at the Mansion and the games it played. The few words of barely-remembered text wavered before her eyes, incessantly assaulted by doubts. She persevered.

 _Persevere, Rumple, hold on a little longer,_ she said to the black-stained heart in her hands each night. She did not know if he could hear the exhaustion in her voice.

Sixteen days later, she found it.

Henry was staying at the apartment with Gideon that day, and she was alone in the Mansion. The small octavo volume sat at the very end of the lowest shelf in the library's farthest corner, no thicker than a pamphlet. Gingerly prying it out of the shelf, Belle saw that it was indescribably ancient in appearance, its cover of once rich leather marked only with a fine filigree of dusty cracks. As gently as she could, she flipped it open.

Right on the first page—parchment in surprisingly well-preserved condition, at least a millennium old even at a glance, probably more, a part of her librarian's mind assessed automatically—were two handwritten paragraphs in a flowing, refined script, though they appeared to have been jotted down in a hurry.

 _The Dark Realm is a world of horrors, a source of the blackest magical energy. It is the source of the Abomination that has changed everything. Too little is known of that Realm. Too little is known of the Darkness that emerged from it._

 _Time is running out. I must find a way to break this terrible Curse. Everything depends upon this. The Dark Realm may be where my answer lies. I shall seek truth in a condemned world, hope amongst dread. I shall open a portal to the Dark Realm, and chance its demons and terrible night. Gods, I pray to you as I have once prayed, grant me Light enough to overcome Darkness. Grant me a sign, that I can still bring back_

The sentence broke off in the middle. Heart racing in her throat, Belle lifted the page. A scrap of paper fluttered down to her feet. Laying the manuscript gently down onto a nearby table, she bent to pick it up from the floor. The patch of vellum was no bigger than the palm of her hand, irregularly shaped, and dotted with several holes, its edges a deep shriveled brown. The burnt remnant of an once-larger sheet, perhaps? Unwilling to distract herself from the tantalizing words she had just glimpsed, she slipped the little bookmark back into the volume, which was spread open upon the table before her, looked down again, and took in another sharp breath.

On the next page of the manuscript, the drawing of a stony tower upon a hill stared back up at her. The lines of faded ink were rough, obviously swiftly made, yet there was a visceral force about them, a palpable weight of fear and foreboding. The tower's walls were pitch-black instead of white, no lamplight in the windows, and the hill upon which it stood was bare and rugged, devoid of vegetation. In this picture, no stars shone in the sky above, only heavy storm clouds. But the sharp geometry of the buttresses and turrets, the spires like blades against the ominous heavens: she had seen those shapes before, in her dream or more precisely Gideon's dream, deceptive and truthful at once. The image was perfectly familiar, and utterly alien.

This was it, the final confirmation to her wild leap of logic. This was a tower in the Dark Realm.

After a long while, Belle finally tore her gaze away from the drawing. Beneath it, four more lines of text were scribbled across the very bottom of the parchment. She barely recognized the same hand that she had just read on the previous page, for these words were even more rushed in appearance, the letters twisted and shaky, as if they had bled onto the page in tremendous anguish. Not even a trace of poise remained.

 _When the purest water of all returns_

 _And reflects this tower in a field of stars,_

 _When the monster remembers innocence_

 _Then she will be free._

She? Who was 'she'? Belle blinked, lost in bewilderment. How could there be pure water and reflected stars in the Dark Realm? What did any of this mean?

Shaking her head half-consciously, she reached to volume and turned the page once more.

Scattered phrases, blotted out here and there. Smudges. _This tower shall rise, many years hence...A dark fairy, enslaving the innocent in toil. She will build this tower..._

The Black Fairy? Could this refer to Rumple's mother? Was the drawing that of her tower? Had the manuscript's author seen it all in a prophetic vision?

 _Sealed. The Dark Realm was sealed by those far more powerful than I. It is a Prison. It is impervious to ordinary magical means. Unreachable. My magic barely suffice—_

The author spoke of opening a portal, two pages past. How did he do it? What means beyond the ordinary did he possess?

 _There is no more time. The Darkness is too strong. Stronger than my Light, stronger than my_

 _Condemned_

This was the last word in the entire manuscript. One by one, Belle turned the remaining sheets, scanning each one of them front and back. Then she repeated the procedure, three or four more times. Beyond the three pages that she had seen, the volume was completely empty.

Disappointment stung her mouth like acrid flames. Two words scorched her eyes. _Sealed. Prison._ Standing there alone in the library of the Sorcerer's Mansion, Belle leaned down against the rickety little table, both palms braced against the wood. She forced herself to keep breathing. Keep hope. She had become an expert at telling herself to keep hope these last few years. Yes. She could keep seeking, keep pounding against the walls. She had come this far.

She could still keep her wits about her. If the manuscript was to be believed, none of the usual methods for moving between realms would work with the Dark Realm. Maybe none of the methods she had ever heard of. Yet the Black Fairy had been banished there, and then she had been able to escape. She had been able to kidnap children and carry them to her domain. The one who wrote in this manuscript, whoever he had been, whatever he'd been searching for, must have found his way there. And Rumple and Gideon...

Rumple was there right now. Gideon could see him, possibly communicate with him.

Belle squeezed her eyes shut tightly, counting to ten, to twenty. Gradually, she felt the cool air returning to her lungs, and with it, a fresh burst of will.

Seals and prisons be damned. If there was ever anyone—she didn't care how many of them or how few—who managed to get in or out of the Dark Realm, then so would she.

.

* * *

Notes: What Gideon saw of the pieces of the Black Fairy's wand is a little hard to describe...There's a lot of dark magic on them, which is why he was able to see them at all, but the wand also still has at its core a remnant of fairy magic, which is light in nature, which makes it go in and out of existence in his sight. The "string" around it is the Blue Fairy's little thread of extra magic. Gideon does not actually see it, so it appears in the "negative", if you want to imagine, but there is no way he would be able to describe it (even though he is highly precocious and has very advanced verbal skills for his age).

The line about "too much light can be blinding" is from Chapter 8.


	13. Wand

.

 **Wand**

.

.

With a nod, Regina ushered Belle into the house. The mayor was impeccably dressed as usual, not a single hair out of place, demeanor cool and poised, gaze steady though unreadable. The dark circles under her eyes could not be completely disguised by makeup, however. The two women did not exchange small talk until they were both seated in the living room.

"I sent Henry out for an errand," said Regina. Her voice was marginally less hoarse in person; over the phone, she'd sounded like she had not slept for a week.

"I want to thank you for agreeing to help me," began Belle, a little too tentatively. "I am sorry that I called you so soon after you return; Henry said that you only got back to Storybrooke last night—"

"Has Henry been talking to you about my trip?"

"Well, er, not really. Henry just mentioned you were out of town." Startled by the sudden tension in the other's tone, Belle cast about for a convincing cover story. "He's been...looking over some old things with me. He can tell you when he gets here—"

"Never mind Henry," interrupted Regina tightly. "No need to get him involved. Now. You were saying, over the phone, that you wish for my help?"

"Yeah." Too late to back out now. "I was just hoping that, uh, you would look over a magical item for me. It won't take much of your time."

Digging in her bag, she pulled out a slim rectangular package, neatly wrapped up in a piece of white cotton cloth, and placed it onto the coffee table. It took her a minute to unwrap it, layer by layer, until the three pieces of the wand lay revealed, their deep-grained black wood glossy in the morning sunlight from the window. For a long while, the mayor sat without speaking.

"You know what this is. Who it belonged to," she stated at last.

"I do," confirmed Belle.

"A huge amount of power must have gone through, to break it apart like this," remarked Regina, measuring out each syllable slowly, almost reluctantly. A pause. "Did Rumple use this wand to destroy the Black Fairy?"

"I cannot be sure, of course," said Belle. The words were calm to her own ears, a little clipped. Clinical. "But I believe that he did. Yes. He saved all of us with this."

"And you've kept it, all this time."

"Well, yes. It was in the pawnshop," said Belle. "But I am hoping you would help me with another question about it, actually. I wonder if there is...something else on this wand?"

"Something else," repeated Regina. It sounded like a prompt.

"Another piece of magic." She sensed rather than saw the sharp edge of the other's glance upon her face. "Do you—do you see any magic on it, that's not part of the wand itself? An extra enchantment added later, perhaps? From someone else, I mean someone other than the Black Fairy?"

"And what made you suspect such a thing?"

"I...Recently I found out about a way to detect dark magic." It wasn't even a lie, not really. "But something seemed off when I tested it on these pieces. It looked strange, I guess, so I thought perhaps..."

She allowed her sentence to trail off. Thankfully, the mayor did not press further, at least not immediately.

"You trust me enough to show this to me?"

The question, for some reason, felt familiar. Belle lifted her sight from the fragments on the coffee table.

"There are others in this town who would be able to help you with your question," clarified the former queen, half patient, half curious. "Others who have always firmly belonged to light and goodness, who never...descended into darkness. Who have never imprisoned or threatened you. But you chose to come to me."

"You have changed," said Belle after a heartbeat.

"So have you, it appears."

Once more, Belle found herself scrambling a suitable reply.

"Many things have happened to me," she said. "I am older now. I'm no longer that naive young girl you met once on a muddy road in the forest."

"You're right." Regina inclined her head. "In the past, you would have let down your guard by now, and told me the real reasons why you wanted to learn about the Black Fairy's wand. Despite the history of all the harm I have done to you. You would have told me the truth behind your suspicions. And in the past, you would have taken one look at me this morning, and immediately asked me what was wrong."

"Oh." Taken aback by this turn of the conversation, Belle peered across at the other's face, its pallor tinged with exhaustion, and realization dawned. Wrapped up in her own worries as she was, even she had heard the recent rumors about the mayor's sister. Several months ago, Zelena had disappeared from Storybrooke, taking her daughter with her. No one knew where she'd gone. "I am sorry. I—"

"It's all right." There was no reproach in the other's tone. "Even if you asked me about my troubles, I would not have answered you honestly."

"You went looking for your sister. That was the trip you just returned from."

"Zelena still had a few surprises up her sleeve, as it turned out." The corner of Regina's mouth twitched into the parody of a smile. "For the inhabitants of the realm where she decided to relocate. And for me."

"You found her? And you—" She forced herself to a halt. "I'm sorry. You don't have to tell me."

"Well, you didn't come to me for stories about my recent adventures, did you?" With a small wave, Regina indicated the coffee table between them. Both of them stared down at three pieces of jagged wood, the black polish shimmering against the white cloth.

"You ask me whether there is an extra enchantment that has been overlaid onto this wand. It is not the easiest piece of detection magic," said Regina. There was a meticulousness in the way she formulated each word. "Of course, I have no way of knowing in advance."

Leaning forward, she held out a hand above the coffee table, then gradually lowered it, until her palm hovered but a few inches above the Black Fairy's broken wand. She frowned, squinting in concentration, while the air began to quiver around her fingertips. Suddenly, she flicked her wrist. A low crackle. For a fraction of a second, a spark of bright blue flared into life just below the tip of the wand, then died out almost instantly. Belle gasped. Regina yanked her hand back swiftly.

For a few moments, neither of them said anything. Eventually, Regina let out a long breath.

"You saw what you saw," she muttered. "I cannot tell you more beyond this."

"The answer is yes," whispered Belle.

"Maybe. Maybe not. As I said, I knew nothing about this wand before you brought it to me today, and this is the extent of where my magic leads."

"But..." Belle's brows furrowed. She needed to press the point, that much she could sense. "Is it possible to find out whose magic this is? What it does?"

No reply. Stillness hung leaden between them.

"Let me tell you a bit of my story after all," said Regina at last. "The story of what happened when I went searching for my sister."

Belle waited. She heard the trace of tension that ran through the former queen's quiet words, the hint that this was no mere idle tale, but a warning. Of what?

"Zelena grew restless. She was tired of her life in this town, I suppose," began the mayor. "And I was neglectful. Caught up in my own desire to prove myself redeemed as I was, it didn't occur to me that she...did not share that desire."

"She left the Land without Magic for another realm?"

"Unknown to anyone, Zelena had managed to retain a portion of her magic after all. She had hidden away some of her power in an external vessel, an amulet, ahead of time. She stole an important magical artifact and passed through the Enchanted Forest, then several other realms, leaving a trail of trouble in her wake. I finally caught up to her in Oz. I asked her—I begged her—to return with me."

"But she didn't."

"In the end, I still underestimated the strength of her resentment. She escaped from me, and when I caught up with her again, she had been defeated by someone else, who had also been tracking my sister this whole time. It was someone who possesses very strong magic, and an absolute, fierce dedication to the service of light. Someone also from Storybrooke."

Another halt. She was supposed to supply the name, Belle realized.

"The Blue Fairy?"

A flicker across Regina's eyes, but she neither nodded nor shook her head.

"Of course, she was in the right, as always. Without going into all the gory details, my sister and her plans posed a threat to the entire realm of Oz." Bitterness burned beneath the level words. "It was necessary to stop Zelena, to neutralize the threat."

"What happened to her?"

"I was able to bargain for her life."

"What did you...?"

"More than Zelena's life, I could not ask for. Or so it was made clear to me. After all, how could I object to good defeating evil? How could I fear or grieve, when I've long prided myself on my journey to the light?"

The two women sat facing each other across the coffee table. There was some implication between the lines the other was expecting her to grasp, Belle could tell.

"What about Robbie? Your niece?"

"Well. That is a very good question, isn't it?"

"The Blue Fairy took her," said Belle, pronouncing the name that Regina was so carefully and obviously avoiding. She spent a moment watching for a reaction. "She appointed to herself the right to decide the child's fate."

"She has represented the force of good for many centuries. She possesses the strength of her principles, and those principles give her wisdom. That is, the wisdom to know what is for the best." The sardonic tinge of Regina's voice was unmistakable now. "Also...I wasn't powerful enough."

"But you are Robbie's aunt. You're her closest relative."

"You yourself know very well what I was, for many years. Why would someone like her trust someone like me?"

"She wouldn't," replied Belle slowly. "The Blue Fairy would never risk trusting anyone who has been tainted by darkness. Not only you, but all others who have ever done evil. She would refuse to give someone like that a chance."

"Yes." The turn of Regina's lips fell halfway short of a smile. "Exactly."

"She has your niece, and your sister." Belle's gaze snapped up. "This is why you won't answer my question directly, isn't it?"

"It is her responsibility to be vigilant." If her leap of logic took the mayor by surprise, she did not show it. "If I now consider myself one of the heroes, then I must respect that."

"You won't say anything against her. You can't. Was that part of the deal you made to save Zelena? But that extra magic on these pieces of the wand, it..." She drew in a quick breath. "It is hers, isn't it?"

"All this is what you yourself imagine. I haven't told you anything."

"And you know that I..." After a split-second debate with herself, Belle plunged on. "You know that I haven't told you the truth on why I wanted to learn about this wand. But you also don't want to ask me, right?"

"It is none of my business."

"She had possession of the wand for years. Centuries. What does it do, this enchantment she added? Please."

The mayor sat stock-still for several seconds.

"Zelena was imprisoned. I can explain to myself that it was the only way, only what she deserved after what she tried to do, but her daughter..." She grimaced. "Robin's daughter. I have no idea where she has been hidden."

Forcibly, it struck Belle just how defeated the former queen looked. It was difficult to associate the weary woman before her with the tyrant of old, the terror of the Enchanted Forest, filled with countless schemes and ruthless rage. Now there was only resignation.

"I am sorry." She did not know what else to say.

"Suppose someone you love turns her back and walks out on you, slamming the door like she's forgotten every word you ever tried to say, like you're an utter stranger." Regina's voice was soft and pensive. "Especially when this person has done many terrible things. When everybody else tells you, this person is beyond redemption, beyond hope...What would you do in such a situation?"

At last, she was looking directly into the younger woman's eyes. Belle bit her lips. It stung to hear the analogy being drawn between Zelena and Rumple, no matter how obliquely, but she shoved down the first instinct to argue against the comparison.

"You keep wondering if things could have been different," she said. "You try to figure out where things went wrong, where you went wrong. And you search, and search, because you need to find that person, if only to ask why. You search because you have to hold on to faith that maybe, after everything that has happened, you can still make love return, make things right..."

"And you can't help it but keep searching," continued Regina for her. "But when you reach the end, what can you possibly expect, when what you once held closest is lost and gone? What else is left, other than disappointment and grief?"

"But perhaps that is not always the case. Perhaps there can be an answer after all, beyond the disappointment and the grief. Because no one knows where is the end, the real end."

Leaning back against the couch, Regina sighed. Her sight remained fixed upon the other's face, not exactly incredulous but almost.

"Do you...believe that?" she asked in a low voice.

"I don't know," admitted Belle. "But I need to believe it, I guess."

The former queen nodded, straightening.

"I am sorry that I cannot show you what is on this wand," she said firmly.

It was difficult to explain the unspoken communication that passed between them, but Belle felt it, the hidden current of mutual sympathy like a warm breeze, muted yet palpable. On an impulse, she leaned forward and laid her hand briefly upon her old enemy's arm.

"Thank you," she said sincerely. "I will not talk to anyone about what you revealed to me today, not even to Henry."

Gathering up the three pieces of the Black Fairy's wand from the table, she began to wrap them back up into the cloth. Regina watched in silence as she packed away the fragments in her bag.

"You used to wear your heart on your sleeve, Belle. So fully and passionately, your love and your hate and the brightness of your light were all laid out in an open book, for anyone to read...You are not that way any longer."

They had both risen to their feet. At the musing comment, Belle turned.

"It is a bad thing, isn't it?"

"Nah." For the first time, something approaching a genuine smile flitted across the mayor's face. "You were a lot easier to manipulate back then."

"Some people would still seek to manipulate me, though," ventured Belle as they headed out of the living room and toward the foyer. "For the sake of good, of course—the safety of this town or world, for example."

She did not need to specify a name.

"Perhaps." Regina shrugged. "But you have less to fear on that account nowadays, I think. As I said, you have changed."

I haven't really changed that much, Belle wanted to protest, not what drives me, not what's deep inside. But as she stood at the front door, her words of farewell came out rather different.

"Surely, nothing and no one lost to us can truly be gone forever, without a trace. I hope you will eventually find answer you're searching for, Regina, and that you will be able to accept that answer."

"So do I," murmured the former queen, returning her gaze with one that brimmed with meaning. "So do I."

That night, Belle was sleepless once more. She replayed her memories, taking apart each phrase, each hint, each warning from Regina. Despite the extraordinarily guarded way they were stated—or not stated, more precisely—there was no ambiguity to those hints and warnings. What had actually transpired with the Blue Fairy, to make the once indomitable queen so wary and nervous? She could just barely conceive of several scenarios, but in order to map out her next moves, it was imperative that she went over each one of them.

In the morning, she picked up th phone and made another call.

Later that day, Belle found herself walking down the whitewashed hallway of the convent, led by a young novice. Their footsteps echoed across the pale floor tiles, mingling with the pounding tension of her own heartbeat. At the end of the corridor, her fairy guide halted, and knocked on a heavy wooden door. It swung open noiselessly, as if of its own volition.

"Mother Superior," greeted the novice, bending her head.

"Belle, my child." The Blue Fairy rose from behind the desk, coming forward to meet her visitor. "I am so glad you've decided to come to see me."

The novice slipped away, closing the door behind her. The head fairy gestured toward a chair; Belle sat down obediently, gathering her courage.

"What worries you, child?" The Blue Fairy scrutinized her face, concern written over her own expression. "If you don't mind me saying so, child, you do not look well."

Her lack of rest the previous night would enhance the lies she was about to tell, make them more convincing, thought Belle. But she did not have time to dwell on the irony.

"You said to me, once, that I would always find help with you, should I ever need it," she said, drawing a deep breath. "I need it now, your help. Your advice. I must know...about what happened to Rumplestiltskin, where he is now."

"Rumplestiltskin?" The head fairy started nearly imperceptibly. "What happened to make you ask about him?"

Trepidation tightened her chest, and a twinge of guilt. More than a twinge. She had always cherished her own honesty so much.

"I have been dreaming of him the last few nights, and they may be prophetic dreams," she said. "They were nightmares, of the one thing I fear the most. The one thing I have always prayed would never come to pass. I dreamed that...that Rumplestiltskin returned to Storybrooke."

.

* * *

Notes: So we come to Zelena...Actually, she will be out of the way for most of this story. For all that she is and has done, the love her sister feels for her is genuine.

Bit by bit, Belle is getting closer to her goal. But before we return to Rumple in the Dark Realm, there is one more thing I need to do, so there will be a change of perspective in the next chapter.

At this point, maybe I should say that my ultimate goal for this entire story is in fact to break Rumple from the darkness. He will no longer be the Dark One at the end of it all. I have a plan on how to do it, and it will hopefully be an unexpected (and very radical) way.


	14. Asylum

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 **Asylum**

.

.

More and more frequently these days, she would dream of giving birth. Nothing in these dreams ever varied: the crushing force of her womb's convulsions ripping her body into pieces, the clenched teeth and hands, the sting of forced-back tears blurring her vision, someone dabbing at her forehead while she gulped desperately for breath. Her husband's voice, attempting to soothe. One more push, just once more...Always the same dream, always exactly the same as she remembered, from all those years ago. A blast of winter chill, and the little forest hut fluttered into darkness. Then she would hear it: the cry of a healthy strong newborn, the most beautiful music that ever touched her ears. Tender words. The midwife lowered a soft swaddled bundle toward her breast, and she reached out in exhaustion and bliss...

She would awake covered in a sheen of cold sweat, her arms empty, alone. There were no candles or warm glowing lamps in the room, only a flood of pale light from a fluorescent panel in the ceiling. The frame of her bed was steel, bolted to the floor, and the walls were immaculately white. There were bars on the single small window set high overhead.

It was strange, how real her body felt. She could still shudder. She could still ache. Her heart could still race and pound and slam against her rib cage. Logically, she knew that each and every one of these sensations had to be an illusion. Her flesh and bones, hands and feet, blood, limbs, breath—everything was long gone and reduced to dust. Her son, her sweet baby boy had made sure, absolutely sure that nothing remained.

"It's all right," she muttered to herself, sitting up straight, fingers tightly gripping the edge of the bed. The short sentence was exactly as the doctor had taught her to repeat. "It's all right..."

It was all right to fear; it was all right to rage. Rage was what betrayal deserved, no more and no less, and it was the last solid thing she had to hold onto. It was natural. It was the truest part of herself, the part that death could not take away. This was what Dr. Brontus had shown to her.

The doctor was the only person who ever talked to her down here. She remembered how she had first laid eyes on him, not long after she'd found herself imprisoned in this cold cell, clad in a thin hospital gown. She was still choking on the scent of blood and ashes. Her own ashes. Rumple's contemptuous snarl was still reverberating inside her ears. Like thunder.

Curiously enough, the knowledge that she was condemned brought no horror. In a detached, abstract way, maybe some part of her could even appreciate the poetic irony of her fate. So she sat in the cramped room, staring at the wall, and forced herself to stay steady. She stared at the whiteness and waited and waited and waited. And gradually, too gradually, the realization began to sink in.

Her son would not be coming for her.

Despite everything, Rumple had defied the certainty of her vision, defied the destiny that he had once been born for, thrown away the one precious chance she had fought and won for him with the sacrifice of her own life. He had clasped Gideon's heart in his hands, the hands of the Dark One, and he had not reached for the light. And that...was that.

Shaken as she had been, she hadn't even had the chance to react when the nurses entered the cell for the first time. You need help, they told her. And help came in the form of pills—handfuls of them—and scalpels and probes and electrodes. A mere lost soul now, she no longer had the power to kill each and every one of them, or even to fight back, or even to struggle against the heavy hands of the orderlies. So in the end she was left huddled in a corner of the room, retching and shivering uncontrollably, hating herself for her helplessness. An excellent initial treatment, said the nurse with a grin, baring her teeth.

And that was only the beginning. She could get used to the pain. She could get used to the imprisonment-she had been a prisoner almost her entire life, after all. What she could not get used to was the memory of that last moment, facing her child and the wand he was pointing at her. It kept returning, again, again, again, another thousand times. The nearly invisible glitter of blue, mingled into blackness. Herself, crying out. _Rumple, drop that wand._ The explosion of blinding fire, everywhere at once. The moment of her death.

Then, one day right in the middle of a treatment session, a new voice wafted down from somewhere that was both only a few yards and a million miles away. The sound of it was neither loud nor angry, but somehow it still sliced through all the inward screams she was busy not uttering. It told the nurses and orderlies to get out of the room, and not to come back. They obeyed.

The man was surprisingly youthful in appearance, of no more than middling build and clean-shaven. Button-down shirt, khaki pants, pleasant unassuming smile. Hardly remarkable to look at, one could say, except there was something she was not quite able to describe about his eyes, and the way he spoke was very, very gentle. He gazed down at her and held out a hand.

"Fiona," he said. "I was unable to stop them from putting you through this until now. I'm sorry."

Dr. T. Brontus, psychiatrist, was the name by which the man introduced himself. From a manila folder in his hand, he read out aloud her deeds in life in a quiet, unwavering voice, looking up only occasionally. He was not afraid of her—which, she supposed, was not surprising, given what death had reduced her to. Yet he also seemed curious, as if genuinely interested in talking to the monster. That was surprising.

"I want to help you," he said. It was exactly the same sentence that the nurses had spoken, yet it sounded utterly different.

That had been a year ago. Or had it been two years, or ten, or a hundred? Did time exist in the Underworld?

Somewhere along the way, she began to recover the ability to consider her situation rationally. Her mind emerged out of the dense fog with agonizing slowness, but at long last, one thought took shape, pushing itself into focus with overwhelming clarity. She must get out of here.

From this cell. From this world. From this existence. She must return, go find her traitorous son, face him one more time, and then...

She would decide what to do then when she came to it. For now, she could only take advantage of what meagre resources she possessed, play along with the kind doctor, gain his good graces and maneuver him into aiding her purpose, unwittingly or otherwise. It had taken her a long while, more sessions than she could count, more effort at subtle manipulations than she believed herself capable of, but lately, she thought she detected signs that all her expressions of penitence, all the little hints and pushes were—finally, finally!—starting to take root.

"You've made such wonderful progress, Fiona," Dr. Brontus had said during their last meeting. "In the past, I've had my doubts, but at this point..." He peered across the room at her with a gleam in his eyes. "I believe I will have some good news for you soon, Fiona. Very soon."

Hope had flickered before her vision at the man's words, and something within her had leapt in exultation. Ever since that meeting, she had found herself anticipating the doctor's next arrival, despite every effort to guard herself against such foolish expectations. Beyond the little window, twilight flowed and ebbed; she measured out its alternating pattern, planning her next steps. And now...

As if on cue, a knock sounded at the door. Fiona straightened, pulling her hospital gown tighter about her shoulders. She did not speak, or ask who it was: there was no need, as only one person ever knocked to enter this cell. She heard the clink of a key, then the heavy drag of the metal door across the concrete floor.

Dr. Brontus stepped into the room, shutting the door carefully behind him. As usual, he sat down on the only other piece of furniture the narrow cell contained, a plain chair whose legs were also affixed to the floor. Sitting on the bed, she inclined her head at him.

"Doctor," she greeted meekly.

"How are you today , Fiona?" It was the same opening, the one he always used.

"I've been thinking," she said. "About my son."

"The Dark One, yes. We have talked about him many times, from the beginning." The doctor nodded. "Do you remember the question I have been putting to you, our last few sessions?"

"You asked me, if I were able to see my son again, what would I do?" Her hands rested placidly in her lap, and there was no tremor in her voice whatsoever. "I told you that I could not answer it, because the question didn't make sense. I am never going to see him again."

"Nothing is so certain as to justify the word 'never'. Not even death."

She blinked, as if not trying to guess his meaning.

"What do you mean?"

"You've had time to think about the question, Fiona. Are you able to answer it now?"

"If I were to see my son again, I would...I would talk to him, be the mother that I should have been and never was." She paused, gauging for the correct phrases. "I would try to change him, the way I have changed."

"You have changed, indeed." He nodded; she thought it could have been in approval. "But your son is what he is. We have discussed this many times."

She did not say anything right away.

"You know what is inside of him." Brontus was watching her steadily. "And what is inside of you. This, too, is something I believe you comprehend very well. What is the first step to healing?"

"Acceptance," she recited dutifully. "But I..."

"Acceptance of your feelings, your thoughts, yes. Acceptance of what you are."

This was obviously yet another test. Wasn't it? She spent an instant in deliberation.

"I had many dark feelings, and the thoughts that preoccupied me were...evil thoughts. I realize this now. Thanks to you, doctor."

"I am talking about acceptance of _all_ of your feelings and thoughts, Fiona, even ones that society perceives as dark or—if we must use that word—evil." The psychiatrist gave a barely perceptible shake of the head. "You have opened up to me about them in our previous sessions."

For a while, Fiona remained motionless, though she knew, immediately and with perfect clarity, what he meant.

"My son," she said. "Rumplestiltskin."

The doctor waited.

"I fought. My entire life, I fought so hard for him. All those years when I didn't think I could go on..." She swallowed. "And then, after centuries, when I found my way to him, it ended."

"Your last encounter with your son," encouraged Brontus.

"It ended...just like that." Her hand fluttered aimlessly in the air. She had no idea what other words to use.

"Betrayal is always difficult to come to terms with. Which is precisely why it is so important that you do. You need to face it, come to grasp it fully. It is the only way forward."

"Betrayal," she murmured, meeting the other's mesmerizing gaze. "It would have been all right, I would have forgiven him in a flash if it were merely him...killing me. But I wanted—I thought he would—"

She halted, drawing back into herself. Silence.

"What did you think Rumplestiltskin would do?" asked the psychiatrist, as patient as ever.

"I thought he would...do things differently afterwards." Fiona lowered her sight. This was a topic she had always kept to herself, carefully and desperately as if it were the last bit of treasure she possessed, yet now she was slipping, and revealing too much.

"You thought that he would have followed the command of the darkness that lives within him. After all, it had long animated his soul, given him everything." In the quiet cell, there was a very faint echo to the doctor's voice. "Ironically, its command would have been to reach for the light, which had once been his birthright."

She drew back involuntarily, a very slight movement.

"You need to find out thing about people in order to help them. It's part of my job," explained the other, clearly having noticed. "Your son is a big part of what drives you."

"I am..." she searched for a way to formulate her reaction. "I am just a little startled that you were able to learn even about this."

"Oh, it wasn't easy, by any means. I had to pull any number of strings, in ways that I had never done before. Perhaps some of those methods weren't one hundred percent legitimate, I confess." The corner of his mouth twitched. "But you are a patient for whom I have a great deal of sympathy, Fiona."

"I thought—I did not expect that anyone else would have learned this. About what Rumple could have done."

"Let's say that a...small fluctuation in the very nature of magic was recorded, at a point of time some minutes after your death. It was brief, repairing itself almost immediately, but there was some concern, from the bits of information I could gather. As far as I could learn, those upstairs investigated the event, and they drew their conclusions."

"Those upstairs?" Far too belatedly, her brain creaked into action. "On Olympus, you mean?"

"What was surprising, of course, is that _you_ were able to figure out the idea," continued Brontus without answering her question directly, which was enough of an answer. "It was a long shot, and ultimately did not work, yet I can tell you, I could not have been the only one impressed."

Gideon must have come close, realized Fiona. He had been within an inch of pushing his own light into darkness. Her stomach clenched, though nothing in the expression of her face changed.

"I wanted to break the rules. To gain power through magic's own weakness." Valiantly, she made yet one more attempt. "I now see that it was wrong—"

"But in the end, you didn't. You offered _him_ the chance to gain that immense power instead."

She fell silent at this.

"I haven't thought about it this way before," she admitted at last. "It was just that I...He had that wand. My wand. Together with all the force of the darkness inside him, it was strong, so strong. Yet I just saw. I saw he was being tricked. Reul Ghorm had enchanted the wand." She swallowed back a few choice epithets. "He was going to be condemned...the same way as I'd been condemned most of my life. I tried to tell him. I truly did, but it was as if he'd gone mad—"

She stopped, certain that she had given away too much.

"The Dark Realm, yes." Brontus was unperturbed, as always. "Attacking you, using your wand, would have soon pulled him there irrevocably."

"You know. Of course. This business about Reul Ghorm and the wand was also part of the little 'investigation' the gods did, right?" A low bitter chuckle; it must have been her own. "But what else could I do? He wouldn't, just wouldn't listen to me, not at that moment. If he had the ability to break the rules of magic, then he could get powerful enough to escape the Dark Realm's pull. He wouldn't see it while I was there, alive and standing in front of him; he...hated me too much for that. But I was convinced once I was gone, he would come to his senses..."

For several long heartbeats, the doctor said nothing in response. Eventually, he let out a sigh.

"Your love for your son is very great."

"Maybe." She did not miss the present tense the other used. "It didn't help me or him, as things turned out. But I had no other choice. He had one chance to grasp that momentary breach between dark and light magic, yet he refused. He trod it—and my love for him—into the ground."

"Breach between dark and light magic?" The psychiatrist's brows arched upward. "You had a very precise picture of the situation, it seems."

Fiona debated with herself swiftly. There was something he was still holding back from her, she could sense. A decision that he was yet to form.

"Here. I'll show you," she said.

She rose from the bed and turned around. Dropping to one knee, she lifted a corner of the mattress and slid a hand underneath. It took her a second to pull out a single piece of notebook paper, folded neatly into a small square. Rising to her feet, she took a step toward him, and held it out.

"This prophecy was on me when I died." She could not quite keep the wry grimace from her face. "I managed to keep it from the nurses. It's my only possession now."

She watched the psychiatrist as he unfolded her precious attempt at trust. Brontus held the fragile page lightly before him, scrutinizing the lines written on it. It was a minute or so before he looked up again.

"When light falls, darkness rises," he mused. "Yes, now I can see how you were able to interpret this. It was brilliant of you, truly."

Carefully, he folded the sheet once more, and reached forward to hand it back to her.

"Darkness and light, by their very natures, are eternally opposed to each other," he said. "The difference between them is vast and nearly always insurmountable. Yet you managed to discover this most fleeting of opportunities."

"Rumple's own darkness would not suffice to keep him free from being pulled into that...prison world. To save himself, he had to turn his magic into a completely different kind, far more powerful."

"In other words, to turn it into light magic," observed the doctor. "Yet at one point, all you wanted to do was to protect him from the light."

"That was different." It was too hard to explain, and perhaps she shouldn't anyway. "After everything, light magic turned out to be his only chance. I was certain of it."

"Oh?"

"I learned that there was a...seal on the Dark Realm," she replied after a hesitation. "After I was sent there by Reul Ghorm, I spent ages trying to free myself. I bashed myself against its magical walls, again and again, but I kept at it. I used every drop of power I possessed, every trick I could imagine, and eventually, I figured out a way to slip away from that world, though only for short periods. Minutes at a time, maybe. It always dragged me back no matter what I did."

The doctor's eyes were fixed upon her face. The warmth in them was that of sympathy, as far as she could tell.

"On one of my brief breakouts—a hundred and thirty years had passed on the outside—I managed to make my way into the secret stronghold of the fairies. To Reul Ghorm's private chambers. There, I found a book." She stopped again, then decided not to elaborate on what that book had been. "It had some notes in it, among which were a line or two, about a seal that had been placed on the Dark Realm. No ordinary magical means would ever break the seal, certainly not dark magic, no matter how much of it. Only the purest light magic was able to allow anyone to enter or exit."

"I see." Brontus nodded again. "And this was the reason you used the Savior's powers to help you escape the Dark Realm permanently?"

He was a quick one, yes; she'd known that all along.

"My son is trapped in the Dark Realm," she stated.

"Your surmise is correct."

This, too, was only confirmation of what she'd known all along, yet it was a while before she was able to continue.

"It was his own choice. I guess it was no more than what he deserved. Yet...yet at that instant, when he was battering me with such terrifying force, waves after waves of it, it was as if I saw everything all at once. I came to so many realizations in a flash. My whole life, his whole life. It seemed so clear to me. He would break light and darkness, break magic itself, it had to be him..."

"Whatever he might have once possessed at birth, the darkness is the only thing he has left now. It is the only thing you have left."

The other's calm tone brought her back to the present. She glanced up questioningly.

"I have seen the tremendous progress you've made, Fiona, and more importantly your steadfast desire to make progress," said Brontus, leaning forward in his chair. "I honestly believe you deserve another chance. As you might have guessed, I have been working on your behalf. It took a while. I had to pull quite a few strings, convince quite a few powers that be...And I didn't want to tell you until I was sure things would work out. Until now."

"...And now?"

"Now it is my professional judgment that incarceration would no longer serve the interests of the realms at large, nor your interests."

"You mean...You are going to release me from this cell?"

"Not me; I don't have that authority." Brontus smiled. "But I have obtained, from those in charge, certain permissions, which concern more than merely this cell."

Fiona held her breath.

"I posed a question to you at the start of today's session, Fiona. And many times before. What would you do, if you were to see your son again?"

Between the gentle syllables, she could sense unspoken thoughts being offered to her.

"Why are you doing this for me?" she asked.

There was a nearly imperceptible pause.

"Let's just say that losing a loved one is something I understand," he replied evenly.

"And...?"

"And that to be on opposing sides of darkness and light with someone you love is never sustainable. It only leads to betrayal, Fiona."

She stared across at him, squinting a little under the fluorescent light. All these meetings, and she had never been able to detect even the least hint of magical abilities on the man, knowledgeable as he appeared.

"You are saying I should get Rumple to embrace the darkness," she whispered.

"Your son needs to embrace what he is. This is what healing is about. It is what you want for him, isn't it?"

"I just want him to see that I love him."

"To do that, he needs to understand you fully. He loves you, too, deep down; ideas instilled into him by society kept him from accepting and expressing that love. He has always been in a lot of inner conflict, and as we have discussed before, that conflict is the source of pain."

"But —" She frowned. "But the Dark Realm. The stronger his darkness, the harder it will be for him to escape. This is the nature of the seal."

" _You_ were able to escape, even though your own magic was dark."

"But never permanently, until I discovered...Gideon. And I never figured out exactly how I was even able to break out temporarily," she began. "I hit upon a combination with components of blood magic, and I thought maybe there was still something of the fairy inside me —"

"Maybe it is simply that there is no such thing as an absolute seal, Fiona. There is no such thing as a perfect prison."

Inside her chest, the rhythm of her heart was going wild, though she forced herself to reveal nothing of it in her demeanor.

"I can help him free himself." The words came out slowly, cautiously. "I can restore hope to him."

"There is still a slight technical issue, though." Brontus furrowed his brows. "I believe the best course of action is to return you to your son —alive—but due to the specific circumstance of your death, rebuilding you body and rebinding your soul to it would be very difficult. I do not completely comprehend the magic theory myself, but so it was explained to me by the gods."

Fiona tensed, waiting.

"There is one way around it, however. The only thing that is strong enough to hold your body an soul together is your own darkness. But it is strong enough."

She let out a breath she did not realize she was holding.

"You have help me far more than I could dream of, doctor. You have turned me into a new woman." Her voice was sincere. "I don't know how to thank you."

"Well, there is a small thing." With a casual wave, he indicated toward her hands, which lay in her lap. "That piece of paper. It is rather interesting to me intellectually, I must say, and you have no more need of it, I think."

She looked down at the folded page still clutched between her fingers. Ever letter written there had long been engraved into her memory. Inhaling deeply, she rose to stand in front of the psychiatrist, and proffered it to him earnestly.

"We have a deal," she said with a faint grin.

.

* * *

Notes: The sheet of paper Fiona gives to Dr. Brontus is Henry's prophecy from Episode 6x22, which appeared in Chapter 4. That chapter, along with Chapter 5, also contained the explanation of what Fiona thought Rumple would do after her death. Namely, by pushing Gideon to kill the Savior, she hoped to turn his light magic dark, thus creating an instability in magic itself, which could be exploited by someone with darkness to break the laws of magic. At the moment of her death, she thought Rumple would fulfill her plan.

The seal on the Dark Realm was mentioned in the text Belle found at the end of Chapter 12. It was the reason that Fiona had to use Gideon and Emma to open the portal, allowing her to escape the Dark Realm in Episode 6x16.

About my characterization of Fiona: let me just say for all her evil deeds and mental brilliance, she actually did not strike me as a person who is very good at being manipulative.


	15. Capture

Warning: This chapter contains some graphic descriptions of violence.

* * *

.

 **Capture**

.

.

"Did you dream, Rumple, that you saw sunlight?" asked Milah, incredulous. "Did you dream that a child held your hand? How delusional can you get?"

The dead were dodging his steps again, some of them beckoning in front, some of them following at his back. Some of them moved in silence, some of them sang and taunted. Milah was always among the latter.

"Why would anyone ever touch _you_?" She gave a peal of merry laughter. "Why would anyone ever want _you_ back?"

Rumplestiltskin kept his gaze straight ahead, avoiding her face, and continued walking. The open plain had fallen behind him by now, and the wind had abated some time ago. He was grateful for the lull, as it meant he was able to stop shivering, at least for a while. But the dead, unlike the wind, refused to relent. They went alongside him, to his left and right, never pulling away.

"Where are you going, Beast?" a young man hollered from the throng. The others hooted.

"Why, he thinks he'll escape!" yelled another man from a small, rough-looking band on the other side.

"And how d'you suppose you're gonna do that, Spinner?"

"I don't know," answered Rumplestiltskin, though he did not want to. Laughter erupted once more.

"Please, Belle," he mumbled under his breath. It was to no avail, not anymore. He used to know it so well, the way she spoke, gentle and quiet in a way that never belonged to this world, but somewhere along the way, in the bare dry canyons or upon the endless plain, he had begun to understand fewer and fewer of her words. By now, he could no longer distinguish her voice from those of his tormentors.

He could no longer feel exhaustion. His body was deteriorating—there was still enough awareness left inside him to realize this —but he seemed to have also forgotten how to heal himself. Just as well: there was less temptation to use magic if he could not recall how. At the start of his journey, he had paused from time to time to rest, or to regain his bearings, but he'd found that it was difficult to get back up afterwards, so he no longer stopped for resting, either.

He continued walking, descending into the marsh at the bottom of the valley. A sulfuric miasma invaded his nostrils, but through the fog, by the glitter of intermittent ghost-flame, he thought there was a hint of mountains on the horizon. And if he squinted hard enough, maybe, maybe there was the faintest outline of a stony tower in the foothills, its turrets as sharp as blades.

The viscous ground dragged at each step, wrapping around his ankles like icy fingers. Rumplestiltskin looked up again, and saw a little boy on the path ahead, nimbly skipping along. With perfect ease, the tiny form clambered over rocks and clumps of desiccated roots, apparently untroubled by the horrors around him. Rumplestiltskin shuddered. For an endless second or two, he had mistaken the child for one of the crowd, one of his former victims.

"Gideon...?" he tried to call out. But of course, his hoarse cry dissipated immediately, and the child did not turn around. Another blink, and the illusion had already disappeared.

"Going crazy, son?" It was someone youthful and snide, almost right next his ear.

"You're one to talk, Father," he muttered.

"Well, nevermind," snorted Pan. "You've always been like this, after all. This is just your...oh, shall we say _natural state_ coming out, isn't it?"

Rumplestiltskin did not reply.

"So what are you going to do, my boy?" queried his father, parodying idle curiosity. "Looks like you're in a bit of a bind, aren't you? The only way to escape the Dark Realm is by magic, but you refuse to use magic here. You've convinced yourself that the darkness inside of you is too strong in this realm, and that as soon as you draw upon its power, it will take over your entire soul. Completely. Utterly." He waved a hand for melodramatic effect. "Now, isn't that a pretty dilemma?"

"I'll find a way," said Rumplestiltskin.

"Find a way to not pay the price," mocked the eternal teenager. "Find a way to avoid facing yourself. Find a way to preserve that ridiculous little scrap of self-image of yourself as...What? What are you other than a coward?"

Abruptly, Rumplestiltskin halted, and spun to face the mirage of his father, hands clenched. Around them, the dead gathered closer, eyes bright with anticipation.

"Do you actually imagine you're being _brave_ here?" Pan stood his ground, a contemptuous grin playing about the corner of his lips. "For being afraid of what you really are? For being afraid of the truth?"

Far overhead, a shrill keening pierced the clouds, the wail of some unseen flying predator. Rumplestiltskin drew in a slow breath, feeling the chill of the air, letting it seep into his lungs. Lowering his sight, he turned once more, and continued walking.

Like a hundred other vicious places, the valley, too, dropped behind him. Now the forest stood before him, the trunks of its trees a massed formation of skeletal soldiers, their branches a bristling net of weapons. Rumplestiltskin stood for a little while, searching until he found a gap between the blades. He had to crouch low in order to enter. Roots coiled at the passing of his feet; leafless branches hissed and shifted in threat. The tangle of black whips reached forth toward his limbs.

"So, you actually told that brat of yours that you'll get out of here for him?" piped up Milah. Unlike his own, her footfalls were effortless.

"Sounds like a rash promise to me," commented Pan from his other side.

"Shut up," snarled Rumplestiltskin.

"Ah, he wants us to shut up!" Milah raised her voice, addressing the others that followed. "Are we going to obey? Are we going to stay quiet?"

A whirlpool of laughter.

"Who does he think he is, huh?"

"Why, the Dark One! The Dark One!" The epithet turned into an exuberant chant. "He still thinks he can command us!"

"He still thinks he can kill us!"

"Still thinks he's stronger than the darkness, does he?"

"Stop," pleaded Rumplestiltskin. "Stop! Leave me alone!"

The rhythm of their derision surrounded him, pushing in from every side. Amongst them, he caught a flicker of other voices, a short distance ahead, but he could not distinguish a single word. A rustling noise that he did not quite hear consciously, and a faint scraping of metal, like bars being dragged apart.

With a stumble, Rumplestiltskin emerged into a small clearing between the trees. A gleam of torches on the other side. As he shoved away the nearest ghosts, striving for another forward step, a pair glittering orange eyes flared into life.

Half a second before a high-pitched screech pierced his ears, Rumplestiltskin forced himself to a standstill. A few yards away, a hideous creature was squatting on its haunches, facing him directly, its stick-figure forelimbs clawing at the ground. Behind its protruding, scale-covered snout, two vertical pupil narrowed in excitement or rage or primal hunger.

It took only a fraction of a second for all the dark magic inside him to crash against his skin, his bones, his reason, together with a roaring tidal wave of fear and revulsion. Miraculously, he kept it from bursting loose.

"La, l-l-lo-la-lal," gurgled the creature, scrawny shoulders quivering. Beneath the grayish scales, the veins of its neck pulsed.

"Trying to tell me something, dearie?" Rumplestiltskin heard himself say.

His voice was a wreck of rusty iron. He did not even come close to menace, but the creature retreated a pace. Its body went taut. Around the bottomless pupils of its eyes, countless tiny black specks swirled in and out of existence, a pair of insane storms.

"Lo-lal-lal-la, lal, lo," it wheezed.

The wind howled next to Rumplestiltskin's ears, and something else howled inside his head. He stiffened his back, struggling for concentration. The thing facing him was resistant to magic somehow; this he knew from experience. But not the air around it, not the ground beneath its feet. The earth could swallow the abomination. It wanted to; he knew it. A flick of the fingers, and he could make it happen.

"Coward, refusing to fight," someone observed. He could not tell if it was his father or himself. Rumplestiltskin lifted a hand.

The Dark Realm vibrated, eager to be rid of the monster.

The creature whimpered, but then the whimper turned into a nasty shriek. It leapt forward.

At the same instant, something shifted behind him. Focused desperately upon the adversary before him, even the Dark One did not react fast enough. A tremendously strong force struck him squarely in the back of the head, and every bit of darkness around him and within him exploded simultaneously.

After what must have been an eternity, sensation began to return, that of sharp rocks digging into his back. Wheeling dizzyness, though he seemed to be lying flat and motionless. He could not breathe. Mountains were pressing down on his chest. Wrists. Ankles.

Inch by inch, consciousness clawed its way back into life. Sounds filtered through from the end of an infinite shaft, human beings, talking in urgent whispers.

"It's still too powerful. We saw it back in the clearing, it was about to use its magic..."

"We can't hold it like this..."

 _It,_ Rumplestiltskin's brain repeated in dazed silence. _Its magic._

"We simply have to do our best. This is our only chance."

His eyelids felt like they'd been glued together. With an effort, he pushed them open. A cavern, or the mine tunnel again. On a jagged ledge above, two or three tiny lanterns were sputtering.

"The chains are smeared with dust, as much as I dared." There was something familiar about this voice, though he could not place it. Not one of the dead.

"We don't have the ability to fully refine the dust. We don't know what it can do, if anything..."

Chains. The vast weights holding down his body were chains. Belatedly, he scented the sickly sweetness of dark fairy dust, swirling above his body, probing for the force that lay concealed just underneath his rational self. And that force, too, tensed and rippled into life in response, awaiting confrontation. But the aura of the fairy dust fluttered, lacking direction, and scattered back into a vague mist. He was alive. His power was intact.

He could vanish the chains and destroy his captors in the space of one breath.

Rumplestiltskin let out a half-strangled gasp, as his reason frantically fought back against the rearing magic. This was the darkness talking. Somehow, he drove it back for the moment. Iron rasped against the ground as he shifted involuntarily, yanking at his wrists and chest; they must have been bolted to the floor. Silence fell like a rock.

The face of a man swam into view, hovering above him. Blond hair hung over a pale forehead; a short beard covered a thin-lipped, serious mouth. A pair of icy gray eyes peered down at Rumplestiltskin for several seconds.

"Do you remember me, demon?" he asked, tone outwardly mild.

 _Demon,_ trilled the Dark One, latching onto the word without error. Oh yes, he remembered. He might have forgotten but he remembered what he was now.

"You're making a...rather big mistake," croaked Rumplestiltskin. His throat was full of bile.

The man did not back away; he did not even look startled. He just stayed exactly where he was, gaze unwavering. It was difficult to summarize the expression on his face.

"I've been waiting a long, long time for this," he replied at last. "A few threats won't be enough."

"You have no idea what you are doing," Rumplestiltskin said, then had to pause to recover his breath. "You have no idea." Enough or not, threats would have to do. If only they didn't sound so shamefully like pleads. "What's inside me. Your chains...won't stop me from killing you. In an instant."

"Every moment of my life, I've lived knowing that someone could kill me in an instant. That— _she_ could kill me." For the first time, there was the barest hint of a rough edge to the way his captor spoke, though it faded back to conversational in the next sentence. "Still not enough, demon."

Too sluggishly, Rumplestiltskin noticed that the man was keeping his left hand hidden in a pocket of his heavy workman's coat. It seemed to be gripping something tightly.

"It's not the same. Not at all." He heard the pitch of his own reply veer upward, ending in what could have been a familiar little giggle, except it turned into a cough.

"Really? Not the same as your mother?" The man shrugged, his lips twitching. There was no mirth in his eyes. "You look surprised, demon. But unlike you, I remember the last time we met, you see. What you told us, what you did. Every bit of it."

Rumplestiltskin blinked.

"Marcus," he muttered. "Your name is Marcus."

It was the other's turn to start, though only very briefly.

"You do remember." He nodded. "Do you also remember a friend of mine? You met him, too."

The Dark One snickered. Rumplestiltskin grimaced, slapping it down.

"The one I killed." Memories surfaced on their own, the angry face, the angry words, the weapon clutched in bony calloused hands. The smell of blood permeated his nostrils.

"Yes."

"I can still kill. I can kill you. I will kill you if you don't stop this. It won't be just you."

The other man straightened. Seemingly pensive—please, let it get though to him, prayed Rumplestiltskin—he paced a few steps across the shadows, kicking at the uneven ground. A dull clatter of metal. Marcus bent and picked up the loose length of iron chain that lay upon the cavern floor, pulling at it with this right hand almost idly, then turned and came to stand beside the prisoner once more. He drew in deep, slow breath, and the corner of his mouth twisted upward.

"Do it, then," he said.

Rumplestiltskin heard someone giggle, a short, wild outburst. Do it, chortled the air and the dust. The fool was asking for it, in so many words, and it would be so easy to oblige. The ragged claws of his hands dug into the scaly skin of his palms. Do it. Do it.

"It won't be just you," he reiterated through clenched teeth. "It won't stop with you. I will not stop. Not until all your friends here are dead."

"Do it, demon," said Marcus. The tension in his tone was unmistakable now. His left hand remained buried in his coat pocket. The muscles of his jaw and neck were rigid.

Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes, but magic kept on swirling against the inside of his eyelids. Do it. Do it do it _do it_ —

Something hard and cold slammed into his left temple with terrifying fury, and he cried out, body arching away from the ground. Darkness roared, and he did not see—did not need to see the bonds against his wrists and ankles shimmer, teetering between existence and nonexistence.

He must have screamed, but by some feat of will he never imagined possible, the walls did not break. The next blow impacted, then the next. Power strained outward, fueled by the primal instinct for self-defense, an inch away from shredding his mind, his skin, the man above him, the mines around them.

Marcus seemed to be speaking, but Rumplestiltskin could not distinguish even a single syllable. Others were surrounding them now, maybe shouting or arguing with each other. Eventually, the blows abated, and he attempted to crack his eyes open. A red mist.

It took a century, but the blurry shapes around him started to resolve into faces, their features distorted. The tangle of noises, too, ebbed, discernible words emerging to the surface here and there. He was still shackled to the ground. A circle of men, women and children. None of them had been torn to pieces, not yet.

"Marcus, wait..."

"Remember the plans you told us...We need to use the demon, its magic..."

"The thing thought it could bluff me," spat his tormentor. A length of iron chain dangled from his hand, dripping.

The Dark One, untouched by physical pain, hissed in rage and humiliation. Rumplestiltskin choked it back with a mouthful of blood.

"The dust is working," suggested another man.

"It's holding the demon's magic in check." Marcus nodded. He squatted next to Rumplestiltskin's head, bending down until the two of them were almost nose-to-nose.

"His name was Erik," he said, deceptively calm once more.

Rumplestiltskin grunted inarticulately.

"That was his name. Erik," explained Marcus. "You ask me, the last time we parted ways. He was my friend. I knew him all my life, ever since I was a little child."

"Erik," repeated Rumplestiltskin automatically. The pressure against the inside of his skull was still increasing. All he had to do was reach up, and he would rip through the bonds, through the flesh of the other's chest, through his ludicrously false sense of security. To the man's heart. To every one of their hearts.

He squeezed his eyes shut again, so as to not look at his captor's face. It did not help much. He heard Marcus rise to his feet, and all the men and women and children were talking, at first in low tones, then louder and louder. They took up the name in refrain. _Erik. Killed him. Erik._ Then other names. _The Black Fairy. Monster. Evil demon._

Someone kicked him in the rib, hard enough that he barely prevented himself from curling into a fetal position. Every part of him—everything except one fraying thread of reason—was howling at him to move, to protect himself, to make these idiots realize how horribly they'd mistaken, but the chains holding his limbs in place were fragile, and if he shattered them, nothing else would remain.

The beating restarted, and this time a number of the men joined in. He sensed them, though he refused to open his eyes and look. He sensed the rhythm of their pulses, the heat of their loathing, the exact locations of each of their hearts. He screamed again, hating himself for his cowardice. Another hit to his face. He'd lost count. A barrage of jeers.

"Bell? You hear bells, do you? Ting-a-ling! Ringing bells won't help you!"

Through the cacophony of cries, inside, outside, Marcus shouted something. A lull fell. Several seconds passed.

"Who's Gideon?" The question sliced through the jumble.

"No! There's nobody, nobody called Gideon...No...Stop! Stop...Please..."

"Who is Gideon to you?"

"None of..." He had been weak enough to let out his child's name to these people. "None of your—fucking business—"

A boot landed on his mid-section, not even heavily, but it was the spot where several ribs must have been broken.

"Do you want us to stop, demon?"

"What...What do you want?" He clung onto the echo of the other man's question. If only he could comprehend it.

"Well, it is simple, actually," Marcus replied. "We are willing to stop. We are even willing to let you go. Free us, and we will free you."

Destroy them later, Rumplestiltskin offered to himself desperately. Make a deal. Outwit them. Then you will avenge yourself. More elegantly. More poetically. He would see their eyes fill with surprise and abject dread yet.

"You want me to..." From its centuries-old habit of connivance, the darkness backed up a small step, seeking another path. "To use my magic to get you out. Out of this realm."

"You do get it, then. Not bad for a monster."

"You set that creature—" His brain wasn't working, and all he could do was play for time. "On me. You used it to capture me."

"It wasn't easy to catch," commented Marcus. "But we worked out our plans. Beast against beast. Risky, but I thought it was the only thing likely enough to distract you."

"You were keeping watch for me." The blackness behind his eyelids had begun to wobble and spin. "Searching for me."

"I was afraid you'd disappeared forever, but recently, we picked up your trail again," admitted the other. "What say you, demon? Will you use your magic for good?"

"I don't know how."

The boot pushed down against his ribs. Darkness growled against its leash. Another moment, and it would be free.

"I can...I can figure out a way. Maybe there is something—in the tower. The Black Fairy's tower. Need to get in."

"And you think we haven't tried?"

"Wards." He swallowed. "The tower has wards. Magic to break them."

"Go on," said Marcus, easing up just a little.

"You have dust. A vial of it in your pocket. Use the dust, break the wards. Need to refine it. I can tell you how."

"If you try to trick us, demon—"

The man's sentence cut off in the middle. A sudden stillness enveloped the cave. Rumplestiltskin exhaled. Vertigo washed over him.

"Now, what is all this?" asked a new voice. It was that of a woman, one that he never expected yet recognized instantly. It was both hideously and beautifully familiar.

Cries of fear from several directions, then movement, then cries of pain. He could not quite make anything out anymore, as his consciousness had already started to dissolve.

"You have made acquaintance with my son, I see," said the Black Fairy, each syllable a knife. It was the last thing Rumplestiltskin heard.

.

* * *

Notes: The previous encounter between Rumple and his mother's former slaves, Marcus in particular, was in Chapter 7, when he first arrived in the Dark Realm. In that chapter, he killed one of them in self-defense, and escaped them by taking Marcus hostage. He also asked Marcus the name of the man he killed. Back then, Marcus did not answer him.

Marcus and his companions were taking a big gamble: they did not know their dark fairy dust would suffice to keep their adversary's magic down. They had mined the dust themselves after the Black Fairy's death, but they had no way of refining it to a more potent form. However, it was the only magical resource they possessed.


	16. Son

.

 **Son**

.

.

A hand brushed against his cheek, lightly, yet it made him flinch.

"Your face is a bloody mess," said an irritated female voice somewhere above him. "It's disgusting. You don't expect me to keep looking at this, surely."

Rumplestiltskin tensed. His first instinct was to leap up and shove her away, but his body could not gather enough strength to lift an arm. He couldn't even open his eyes. Must have been struck blind.

"Hold still," ordered the voice.

The surprisingly delicate sensation of magic touched his forehead, probing, soaking down into his flesh. Tissues began to reintegrate, blood vessels knitting themselves together again. He could not resist. Did not remember how.

"They broke your nose," commented the Black Fairy. "And you let them. I can't believe it. I said, hold still."

Two fingers pressed against the spot between his eyes, at the top of the bridge of his nose, and he suppressed a groan. The pain spiked once, sending sparks across his brain, then dissipated like a fog before an abrupt flame.

She, too, must be nothing but a hallucination, one more ghost come to demand...what? Vengeance? Justice? Somewhere buried deep under the rubble, a small part of himself was growling at him to think, to pull himself together, to understand the need to defend himself. But he was simply too tired. Everything was in pieces, and everything was swirling. The same way as ashes swirled. He had redued her to ashes.

The coolness of the air against his skin: the grimy rags that passed for his clothes were being peeled away, also by magic. He twitched, drawing his knees up to cover himself, and managed a feeble movement of one hand.

"Stop it, Rumple," snapped the Black Fairy. "I'm your mother, I've seen you naked before."

Hot water sloshed over him, neither stinging nor sulfuric, but smelling of something incongruous and hopelessly distant, which he might have recognized it in another lifetime. Chamomile. He would have laughed at the sheer ridiculousness, if he'd been physically capable of it.

"Damn it," she muttered, no doubt at the hideous sight of his body.

His eyelids finally came unstuck. Blinking through the steam rising from the bathwater, Rumplestiltskin saw his mother glaring down at him, brows knitted, a frown upon her lips. She was not a phantom. She was not in ashes. Warm candlelight twinkled behind her.

"Mother." he mumbled. Only much later would he realize, with amazement, that the great wave of emotion that overwhelmed him was relief. "You're alive. I didn't kill you."

"Don't talk." Her palm slid across the side of his torso. He didn't even notice the pain as it found the first broken rib.

"Thank gods, I didn't really kill you..."

Silence.

"No, of course not," she replied at last, much more softly than a moment ago. "You didn't really kill me, Rumple."

"I'm sorry, Mother. I'm so sorry."

"Shhh," she murmured.

"I thought it was the only way, Mother...The only way to save Gideon..."

His mother's fingers, in the midst of closing an open gash, halted.

"Where is Gideon?" she asked quietly.

"You're alive," he insisted. "I didn't kill you. You're here..."

He must have drifted off for a while after this. When he regained awareness, he was no longer lying in water, and soft fabric was sliding across his skin. Each muscle in his body was sore and limp, but not burning anymore. Where was he? A candlelit room. A room in the tower. The Black Fairy's tower.

His mother, the Black Fairy, Gideon's tormentor for twenty-eight years.

Rumplestiltskin sat up much too fast, bracing himself though he had no idea for what. An instant later, the air spun out of control, and he dropped back like a rock against the bed.

"Stupid child," said the Black Fairy tightly. When his vision focused, he found her in a chair by the bedside, expression severe, maybe angry.

"Here."

He tried again to lift his head. A pillow slid behind him, helping to bolster his shoulders. The rim of a cup touched his mouth. The liquid was warm and fragrant, and tasted vaguely familiar, reminiscent of another realm, though he could not quite recall exactly what it was. To his surprise, she held it gently to his lips and tilted it slowly.

"Can you swallow?"

He obeyed without protest. Somewhere beneath the shadows and the quietness of the room, he could hear his own rationality dragging itself awake, growing insistent, wanting to remind him of what she was and what he was. It kept on scrabbling for traction, and kept on slipping.

"Mother." He blinked up at her, There must be something in his own eyes that he must conceal, yet he was somehow unable to find it. "How did you return?"

The Black Fairy laid down the cup of soup—yes, soup, that was what it tasted like, another ludicrous idea—and folded her hands in her lap. There was no false smile on her face.

"I told you, Rumple. You didn't really kill me."

By now, he was conscious enough to know it was a lie. But it was clear he would not gain further information easily, and he was in no shape for mental duels, not yet.

"I am sorry, Mother."

She stared across at him.

"And what is the use of you saying this, Rumple? Look at yourself."

"You are ashamed of me," he stated.

Again, the Black Fairy did not reply right away. After the space of a few breathes, she sighed.

"We'll talk about that later, Rumple."

Indeed, they would have to talk later, agreed Rumplestiltskin in silence. There were many things he would need to find out from her, by hook or by crook. How did she return? Why did she return? What did she want from him, this time? To exact justice upon the ungrateful matricide? To bring her 'family' back together again, whatever that meant? Even more importantly, she had once been able to get out of this realm. She must possess the secret of escape still. He could not threaten, not here, not after she'd already seen his weakness, and he could not bargain, not without giving away his own plans...

And if she could help him escape, then so could she herself. To Storybrooke. To Gideon.

The empty space inside Rumplestiltskin's chest constricted, though his face, well-practiced in deception, remained impassive. He glanced up, and saw that the coldness of her eyes had dissipated. Instead, there was only a mother gazing back at her child.

"By the way, where are they?" he asked, trying to change the subject.

"They?" She sounded genuinely bemused.

"The people who..." He choked back the rest of the sentence. "Your workers."

"Oh, them." The Black Fairy shrugged. "I shut them in the mines. I was going to kill them all, but I wanted to do it properly, which would take time. It must have slipped my mind. I'll take care of it—"

"Wait." He caught her hand before she could rise from her seat beside the bed.

She was startled for half a second, then the corner of her mouth curled upward.

"Of course. How foolish of me," she said, nodding. "You should be the one to do it. And you will, as soon as you feel well enough. I promise."

"No." He gulped. "We still need them."

His mother peered down at his clawed fingers, wrapped around her own.

"I don't need anything else, now that you're here with me, my darling boy," she said.

Unprepared for the way she spoke, he had to squint a little, in order to keep on meeting her eyes.

"No," he repeated. "They're...They're still of more use to us alive. Put them to work, the same as before."

The Black Fairy wavered.

"Why?"

"Why what, Mother?"

"I saw them standing over you, Rumple." The old tension crept back into her voice. "It was the very first thing I saw. There you were, down on the ground, at their feet, and—and—"

"Mother, I..."

"It was absolutely humiliating," she finished, drawing her hand out of his grasp.

"I am sorry," he repeated.

"Why? I though something had happened to your powers, but then I saw it, the magic, the darkness. Every bit of it was there all along; I could sense it within you, radiating out, reaching toward me. Why didn't you do anything?"

He could not answer right away.

"There was blood all over you face and body." His mother inhaled sharply in an apparent effort to steady herself. "It was as if you were _helpless_. As if you were afraid—"

"No, Mother," he cut her off quickly, "it wasn't out of cowardice."

"What was it, then? You just lay there while they kicked you in the head! You weren't fighting back, you weren't even trying! What am I supposed to think?"

Leaning against the pillows, Rumplestiltskin made another effort at sitting up straight, this one somewhat more successful. Her hand landed against his shoulder, steadying him. A few of his bones groaned, newly healed yet still fragile, but he did not let it show.

"You must be awfully disappointed in me," he said. "I had my magic when your workers to...do what they did, true, but honestly, it wasn't because I was afraid to defend myself. It really wasn't. You know that, Mother. You've always known that I can fight for myself."

"Oh, yes." The Black Fairy gave a short brittle snort. "I definitely know that."

This time, he winced. But before he could find a convincing lie or apologize again, her demeanor changed once more. Reaching across the space between them, she touched the side of his cheek with careful, almost cautious fingers.

"That's not what I mean, my darling boy. It was all past. I'm back now, and everything will be all right, won't it?"

"Everything will be all right," he echoed.

"It's just that you _allowed_ them to hurt you, when you could have shown them their place with a wave of the fingers. I don't understand..."

Rumplestiltskin considered for a few seconds.

"I guess I just didn't want to," he answered.

"What do you mean, you didn't—"

"It wasn't my style. Throwing magical force around like that, like a child throwing rocks left and right, killing everything in sight with blunt blows...It would be crude." The words came more easily now. "I wouldn't have died, anyway. There was nothing they could truly have done to me."

"They did plenty to you." His mother did not look convinced. "And what were you doing before you ran into them, all these years? You're a skeleton, Rumple! The injuries I had to heal weren't all new, either. Torn-up flesh, old broken bones that had set themselves badly. You didn't even care for your own body. And those horrible rags—how long have you been wearing them? You could have broken the wards an come into the tower, and you didn't so much as—"

"You're scolding me, Mother." He managed to offer her a smile. It was getting difficult to keep up the facade through the curious liquid film that seemed to be veiling his sight, though he must. She, too, smiled, pursing her lips as if holding back the rest of her fretting. The sight of his mother like this was utterly unfamiliar; it felt surreal.

"I will find my own way to avenge myself," he reassured her. "And that's one more reason why we want them alive and aware, don't you see? They'll see what a mistake they made."

The Black Fairy peered at him searchingly, still dubious. The soft reddish lamplight flickered across her face, making her appear too human for comfort.

"All in good time, Mother." He'd had centuries of practice at not averting his eyes.

"Very well," she said finally.

Rumplestiltskin sank back. This was only a brief respite, he told himself while taking stock of his surroundings. The walls of the room were of thick stone, pale on the surface, blocking out the Dark Realm's harsh screeching winds; the air was warm and motionless. Heavy velvet curtains hung over the window, so that one could almost imagine that the night out there would eventually give way to dawn. A fire crackled in the grate across the room, and several lamps rested on a table next to the bed. The magic in their flames was nearly undetectable. He wanted to pull himself together, remind himself what his mother was, prepare himself for the upcoming fight, but he was so, so exhausted...

The light of the lamps was hypnotic. Mother must have enchanted them, he thought as he faded into a dreamless oblivion.

Time flowed in whirls and eddies in the Dark Realm. Rumplestiltskin had the sensation that days, or what might have passed for days in other worlds, had gone by, though it was impossible to tell for sure. Gradually, he was able to rise from bed for short periods, to sit in the heavy armchair beside the fire, or to watch the infinite midnight out there beyond the windowpane. His mother brought him food and drink, and sat with him, though it soon became painfully obvious that they had no idea how to talk to each other. Whenever she was absent from the room, he stared out at the clouds roiling ceaselessly around the tower, and contemplated all the horrors the Black Fairy had visited upon his innocent little child. Memories played over in silence, ten, twenty, a hundred times, some of them real, some of them phantasms. Gideon's pallid face, masked over with a thick layer of desperate rage. Belle—it was Belle, wasn't it?—crouched down on a dirty linoleum floor, curling into herself, breathes shallow and frantic. Ashes raining down to the ground. A slow, sorrowful song, barely audible, filtering through a bright mist of fairy glitter.

A battle—of cunning, perhaps of other powers—was on the horizon, that much he was certain of, yet for now, he was weak enough, or merely weary enough, to indulge himself in her ministrations.

The strangest thing was how the Black Fairy behaved. She refused to discuss their last encounter in the pawnshop, or what had happened between then and now, yet her outward demeanor was unsettlingly indistinguishable from what it might have been, had she actually forgiven him. Not that forgiveness could possibly exist between them, he repeated inwardly during his more lucid moments. She nursed his physical state and complained about his 'messed-up head'; sometimes she made what seemed like authentic attempts at tenderness. There must be something she wanted to cajole out of him, Rumplestiltskin deduced, though he could not quite figure out what it might be.

"Where is your heart?" she asked him one time, and every inner alarm bell went off. But he should never have hoped she wouldn't notice.

"Somewhere safe," he replied. Like a barely-there raindrop into a desert, the dim reverberation of another voice caressed the back of his brain, something about _Gideon_ and _finding you_ and _home_. And _hold on_. He could barely remember the name of the voice's owner, but he remembered to thrust it further back, so that his mother would not overhear.

"Where?" The Black Fairy's eyes narrowed. "In Storybrooke?"

Rumplestiltskin returned her scrutiny evenly.

"Don't you think, Mother, that would be a bit..." He stretched out the next word for effect. "Obvious?"

"I'm only worried about you, Rumple." She frowned. "You were so trusting of that woman. You acted as if you were on her side, and that you couldn't accept yourself, who you are. What you are. And there was..."

It was her turn to cut off an unspoken sentence. He realized it was because she did not wish to arouse his suspicions.

"If you mean my _estranged_ wife, it was clear that the division between us was too great to be bridged." Again, this was not exactly a lie. "If you were me, would you have handed your heart over to someone who remained unshakably convinced that she was part and parcel of the light, and therefore it was her duty to control and reshape your darkness as she saw best?"

"You can be a huge fool at times, Rumple, for someone as clever as you are."

"Maybe." He grinned, though without any guess whether the misdirection was working. "But I've had many chances to learn my lessons."

"I should hope so," said his mother dryly.

"As for the—" Rumplestiltskin decided there was no point pretending he didn't know what was on both their minds, "—the dagger, it and my heart are safe, hidden from all outsiders."

The Black Fairy sighed.

"I am not telling you that you should trust me, Rumple," she began.

"You are right, Mother, I can be a fool. But do you think I am fool enough to leave my heart and my dagger in Storybrooke, of all places? Where any number of self-appointed _heroes_ would love more than anything to get their hands on those two objects? Especially that blue gnat. She may well be powerful enough to get past any protection I could put on them."

"Reul Ghorm, yes." Briefly, his mother looked like she was about to take the bait, but then she shook her head. "It's still far too dangerous, Rumple, no matter where you hid them."

He waited for her to press harder for the precise location of his heart and dagger, a query that would surely be phrased in terms of an offer to retrieve them for him, but surprisingly, it did not come.

"I put away my heart because it was the only way," he added. "It was before I confronted you."

His mother appeared startled by this, and did not reply immediately.

"I could not have done it otherwise," he confessed, this time without weighing each phrase beforehand. "Despite everything I thought back then, I did't want to do it, though I saw no choice before me. In my heart, I really didn't want to hurt you, Mother."

"Oh, my darling boy..." Distracted enough by emotions to momentarily forget the secrets he was keeping from her, she drew him into an at first tentative, then tight embrace. After a hesitation, his arms went around her as well, and he let her hold onto him for what felt like an eternity.

Time, unmarked by the passage of days and nights, flowed on, at once impossibly swift and impossibly sluggish. Creatures of the night rattled beyond the walls, or howled while circling the tower. A measure of strength was returning to his limbs. As much as he could, Rumplestiltskin asked his mother to remain with him, in part to keep her preoccupied. All logic pointed to the surmise that she still possessed the secret of escaping this realm, however temporarily. From what he could see, she had not yet conceived the notion of going off to Storybrooke once more, to terrorize Belle or kidnap Gideon or carry out whatever schemes that might occur to her. Not yet. He started to bend every part of his rational mind toward preventing her from doing so.

He did his best to talk to her. He told her carefully selected tales of his past, mostly about how the Dark One had brilliantly outwitted this hero or that king during his centuries-long career. Occasionally, he spoke about his father: it served to send her anger down a path that was probably less dangerous that others. This was not much of a ploy, certainly far below his normal standards, but Rumplestiltskin reasoned to himself that he needed time to recover, to plan his next moves and work through all the contingencies. Craven self-justifications, perhaps, but he could not come up with anything better. Neither Gideon's nor Belle's name ever passed his lips, not even once. For whatever reasons, his mother did not ask about them, either.

 _Almost there,_ whispered someone very softly from a lost corner of his consciousness. A few other words followed, though he did not comprehend any of them.

Rumplestiltskin stood before the mirror, alone, facing himself for the first time in an eon. His mother had left him for a while, claiming that she had been neglecting the mines, and he had not been able to stop this particular departure. He was clothed the same way as he had been back in the Enchanted Forest, but the magically-conjured silk shirt hung loosely over his frame. His hair had grown out to shoulder length again. The same blackened claws at the end of his fingers, the same blackened teeth, the same shimmering scales covering his skin. The features of his face, though, were different now, even more angular than before, eye sockets hollowed out, cheeks clinging to the bones.

More properly demonic than ever. Rumplestiltskin let out a low sardonic chuckle. Not wishing to see more, he closed his eyes.

Out of nowhere, tiny soft fingers wrapped around his. For an unimaginable instant, it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Papa!"

Sunlight poured into the room. The window was open to a luminous morning sky, and the velvet curtains were fluttering in the breeze. A deep green waterfall of ivy leaves rustled just beyond the window frame.

"Papa!" His son tugged at his hand, beaming. "You're here! I'm dreaming again!"

"Gideon," breathed Rumplestiltskin. Then, rather idiotically, "How did you get in here?"

"I wasn't dreaming for ages." A pout. "Then I was looking all over for you."

All he had to do was to drop to his knees, and the child would be in his arms. Instead, Rumplestiltskin stole a swift glance at the door. Safely shut.

"You need to leave, Gideon."

The toddler blinked, lower lip quivering.

"But—but you said you'll come home, Papa. Mama said she's—"

"No, no." He had to force out the next words. "You can't be here—"

"Who can't be here?"

Rumplestiltskin's eyes snapped open. The child had disappeared, and the room was cloaked in shadow as always, illuminated only by the muted glow of candles and lamps. The Black Fairy was standing in the open doorway.

.

* * *

Notes: Personally, I had the notion that for all her immense power and intelligence, Fiona was in fact far less experienced at subtle mind games than her son.

During his years of wandering the Dark Realm, Rumple's body stayed alive without much (or any) sustenance due to the magic of the Dark One, even though he avoided using that magic consciously. It did not keep him healthy, however.


End file.
